


Forget Me Not

by ShiDreamin



Series: Kinktober 2019 [11]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Biting, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Consensual Somnophilia, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Byleth, Hypnosis, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Possessive Behavior, Post-Time Skip, Rough Sex, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 40,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23450158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: noun1. A low-growing plant of the borage family, which typically has blue flowers and is a popular ornamental.2. True love. As the name suggests, they are given or used to decorate gifts with the hope the recipient will not forget the giver. It also symbolizes faithful love and memories.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Series: Kinktober 2019 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660927
Comments: 13
Kudos: 71





	1. Forget Me Not

> Forget Me Not (noun)
> 
> 1\. A low-growing plant of the borage family, which typically has blue flowers and is a popular ornamental.  
>  2\. True love. As the name suggests, they are given or used to decorate gifts with the hope the recipient will not forget the giver. It also symbolizes faithful love and memories.

There is no denying the cruelty of war when fighting in one. The countless deaths of thousands of innocents weigh down every step, watching burning crops flicker in the distance as an attempt from one army to army to let some poor fools starve. No faction has a wealth of resources, none a true chance at success. It would be a fool’s errand to expect anything but sorrow as the result of a war. Yet.

“Will you join me against the empire?”

Dimitri’s voice is but a rumble, his eyes surveying the fallen around them. Bloodied bodies of the empire, the alliance, his own people lay scattered on the trampled floor, akin to the toys he had once seen as a child. His stretches out his arm to the side, blocking Byleth’s approaching form, nodding down at their fallen friend.

Claude huffs, mouth set in a familiar twist despite the slow rise of his chest, a thin gash cut along his jaw. His eyes make a slow, deliberate sweep of the battlegrounds, chewing at nothing, before relenting, falling back against his thighs. There’s two cuts through his pants, his blouson sufficiently torn, hair slipping onto his face. It’s with an easy hand that he brushes it away, glancing upward at Byleth.

“Yeah,” his voice is but a hoarse whisper, cut down in the ways of battle, “yeah, okay. But, on a few conditions.” Oh? Dimitri raises an eyebrow, glancing over to Byleth’s amused face. Trust Claude to have a trick up his sleeve, even when nearly chased out of the country.

“One: Just me. Hilda, Lysithea, everyone else? They go home. All of them.”

“Acceptable,” Dimitri concedes. They don’t have a remarkably quantity of supplies to begin with, and though he would love to have either of their might on his side, he has a feeling Claude would refuse to budge on this condition. He always had an obvious fondness for his house, even back in the beginnings of their days at Garreg Mach.

“Two: You have to answer my questions truthfully. I’m not kidding on this one, Dimitri,” Claude chuckles, mocking. His hand brushes the head of his wyvern, a lovely creature up close when it’s not tearing enemies to shred. Dimitri had only a few chances to spy Claude’s personal guardian himself, and every time, even now, its gaze had returned to him bloody.

“Of course. Byleth can assist wherever I cannot,” Dimitri assures. Byleth nods, hooking the Sword of the Creator at their side.

“Of course Teach can,” Claude’s grin is crooked as he rises, patting at the dirt and mud sticky on his clothes. “Three, Dimitri. I’m being a hundred percent serious on this one.”

“We don’t kill unless we have to. I mean it. One unnecessary death and I’m _gone_.”

Ah. Right.

He had almost forgotten. It has only been… what? A week, a moon, not even that much, since Rodrigue had senselessly died. It had been truly the definition of unnecessary—it was Dimitri whom the dagger was aimed for, not his allies, nor his friends. Though Claude had not been there, though he had not seen Dimitri realize the extent of the pain he was forcing his friends to endure, he had still trusted Dimitri to come. Hoped that he would take his hand.

Trust that Dimitri does not deserve.

“Deal,” he murmurs. Claude nods, though his eyes are lidded, his gaze stuck on the scene behind them. Quiet now, free of the coughing, the crying, the screaming of war, though the bloodied remains of people torn apart by hand and weapon and wyvern remain scattered along the scene. His eyes float back up to Dimitri, slow.

“Do you trust me?” Truthfully.

“I do.” Byleth’s hand grasps at his own. Claude blinks, flitting from face to face, fingers playing at his bowstring. He could kill them, probably, even wounded and winded from days of battle. There is little doubt in Dimitri’s mind that Claude is fully capable of a truly devastating poison that could melt their skin right from their bones.

He wouldn’t. Dimitri trusts him not to.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Claude stands, then turns, angling his legs over his wyvern. Dimitri sighs, though he can’t find himself particularly surprised. It was a big much, asking his former foe in battle to fight with him, much less against the onslaught that is the Empire—and their former friend at the head. Claude’s never been one for violence, always opting towards clever, peaceful options. It’s not a surprise that he’d rather be somewhere else.

It is a surprise when Claude’s hand extends, palm at Dimitri’s face.

“Nice to meet you, partner.” Then, before Dimitri can grasp at his wrist, he’s floating, flying, drifting into the air. His wyvern bats its wings, sparkling, beautiful, and for a moment Dimitri can see how Claude would be king. Cast in bloodied, torn clothing, and yet, a regal grin pulling at his face, hair curled at his face, hand outstretched.

They can be kings, together, fighting this unholy war.

-

Trust, it turns out, is a little harder to grasp than a spear, a bow, the throat of one’s enemy.

Or one’s friend, grappling with Felix in the dirt, weapons abandoned as they pant. Byleth claps their hands besides them, signaling the end of the sparring match. Felix grunts, kicking out at Dimitri’s stomach and rolling away, coughing as his hand grips at his throat. Dimitri pants, rubbing at the variety of bruises undoubtedly preparing to bloom from Felix’s skillful counters, particularly the jabbing at his side. He’ll likely have a pattern of black and blue for a while.

“That was good. Felix, your speed has improved. Dimitri,” his breath catches, as it always does, waiting for Byleth’s assessment, “good job.”

“Thank you, Professor!” Simple words that he would have dismissed days ago now pull a smile from his lips, a happy fluttering in his chest. Dimitri stands, nodding at Byleth, taking awkward strides off the match ground where Ingrid and Sylvain are now stretching, preparing to tackle each other. They will no doubt be a terrifying matchup, mostly for how furious Ingrid can become when facing him on any field. Dimitri would pray for Sylvain, if it weren’t in naught.

It’s Claude’s slow clapping, hidden away in the shadows of the trees, books and scrolls and blank papers spread by his legs, that pulls Dimitri close.

“What do you think?” Dimitri rumbles, groaning as he sits. His side burns, hissing along his skin, and he rubs a hand at it.

“Of you getting your ass kicked? It was great.” Claude’s chuckle is but a flitter in the air, carried by the breeze as his eyes trail Dimitri’s form. “Shouldn’t you find Mercedes? I’m sure she won’t take too long with Felix.”

“I’m surprised you remember her. Did you talk during the academy?” It had been a pleasant surprise to not have to reintroduce Claude to the former members of Blue Lions. Claude had seamlessly pointing at each person, stated their name, their talents, their positions, and, perhaps most important of all, their weaknesses. His flippant address of Felix was the inspiration of today’s sparring.

Perhaps it’s a good thing Sylvain and Ingrid are sparring. If it were her and Felix, Dimitri isn’t sure they’d leave the match until one wound up dead, and that unnecessary death would certainly have Claude disappear. Dimitri would be down at minimum two allies. Friends.

He hopes, in some part, that Claude still thinks of him as such. Perhaps years in the future.

“Not really. It’s not so hard to remember people, though,” Claude makes a sweeping gesture to the display of texts at his feet, picking up a worn cover and flipping through the pages. “What else am I supposed to do? Call her Healer A?”

“No, no, please.” Mercedes would likely murder Claude for that. Dimitri swallows, shaking his head. Enough with the opening talk.

“Claude, I’ve been thinking about this since our battle. Please, answer me honestly.” As truthfully bound as Dimitri himself, he wants Claude to address him the same. At the very least, just this one question.

“You’re right,” Claude sighs, tossing the book between his hands. “You’ve guessed correctly, your highness. I am indeed single.”

“I wanted—wait, what?” Dimitri squawks, stuttering away as Claude laughs, rolling his papers and books together at the bend of his arm. His feet bounce on the dirt as he, for just a single moment, looms over Dimitri.

“Just in case you wanted to know. Hey, Teach, got some schemes for you!” Claude spins on his feet, waving at Byleth. They wave back before returning to the angry shout of Ingrid elbowing Sylvain in the jaw, her other hand pinching at his elbow.

Then he is across the yard, glittering gold and shiny, as though he had been here all along. He boos playfully when Sylvain gets the upper hand, and cheers as Ingrid grasps his calves and slams him back into the dirt. Byleth rolls their eyes either way, appraising Claude’s messy scrawls.

Dimitri sits under the shadow of the tree until Felix grabs at his arm, pulling, Mercedes waiting.

-

They sleep together.

It’s not a surprise. No one is so eager to snuggle up with Claude, despite his dashing looks and charming words. They faced each other down in battle just months before, Claude’s arrows tipping dirt and wyvern leveling buildings. Petunia, Dimitri’s learned, paws at the backyard and coos when Claude feeds her.

“You aren’t afraid to leave her out here? Won’t someone attack her?” Ashe had asked, curious, concerned. Claude had laughed.

“I’m more afraid for the poor soul who though they’d stand a chance.” That had successfully scared Ashe and Annette alike into staying a solid distance away from the wyvern, though Dimitri could have sworn Dedue tip-toeing near at least once.

As it is, Byleth is the first to volunteer to lay with their new ally. Which is, of course, completely and utterly acceptable, sans the sudden thrumming within Dimitri.

“Wait! You can—you can sleep with _me_.” What was more startling than offering his bed was Claude’s sudden silence, eyes locked onto Dimitri. His friends had sputtered and teased and groaned, Sylvain making crude gestures with his hand while Ingrid and Felix alike had shouted, even Dedue, who had been otherwise quiet, had shook his head.

Claude had said yes, and they lay, now, in bed.

Claude is warm at his side, arms pressed against each other. They don’t have much to spare, so they must share the blanket, though Dimitri had forced the pillow against Claude’s head. Even so, their feet stick out, half of Dimitri’s arm dangling off the bed, his and Claude’s hair entangled in the narrow space between them. Shoulder to shoulder, silent.

Perhaps he should have relented and allowed Claude to rest with Byleth after all. Dimitri squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head despite no one available to see him. No, no. He wanted this. It is for the best that he and Claude lay together—as powerful as Claude is, Dimitri doubts he could take him down so soundlessly, effortlessly in bed.

Well.

Claude is, after all, a man of many talents. Many schemes. It wouldn’t surprise Dimitri entirely if he had something capable of killing him, crest and all. After all, Failnaught is awfully large, powerful, and this close in quarters it isn’t impossible to imagine Claude hammering his head in with it.

Perhaps a poison. A dagger dipped in something beautiful, scentless, tasteless. He could have slipped it into their meals, into Dimitri’s meal. They would all die, soundless, peaceful, in their bed. It would only be Dimitri, his wandering mind awake to experience the slow fading of his heart, the contractions of his muscles as they struggle against the tantalizing pull of death. It would be just him, alone with his assassin, shoulder to shoulder.

“If you’re going to have a panic attack I’m going to call Teach.”

Oh.

“You’re still awake?” Dimitri hisses, low. Claude’s eyes are still pressed close, though there are now the beginnings of a grimace pulling at his lips, the jostling of the bed as his shoulder shrugs.

“Maybe you woke me up.” That is, entirely a possibility. Dimitri angles himself to better glance at Claude. They have no curtains, dead weight, and the result is the moonlight pours into the room, illuminating the curves of Claude’s face, the barest press of his brows together, the parting of his lips. His eyes, open now, glisten as he sighs.

“I’m not going to kill you. You aren’t going to kill me. Go to _bed_ , Dimitri.” His name rolls off Claude’s tongue with startlingly familiarity. How long has it been since they’ve spent time together, alone, in their room? How long has it been since Claude had pulled Dimitri flush, laughing, joking, always a wide smile and twinkling eyes, elusive, illustrious? Human, so obviously human, yet with an otherworldly beauty as their hands met.

Claude’s hand smacks his face. Dimitri grunts, turning, though the tinkering of Claude’s laughter, soft, pulls a smile on his face. He pushes Claude back, aiming for a gentle shove, only to stop short at the pull of his muscles. He groans, curling, hand rubbing at his bruised sides. Felix really had done a number on him.

“See that? Should have gone straight to Mercedes.” Claude’s lecture is entirely unnecessary, yet, Dimitri cannot quell the sudden blooming of warmth in his chest.

“I’m glad you care.” Truthful. Claude quiets, lips pressed, his eyes flickering from Dimitri to the sky overcast. He sighs, turning away, shoulders drawn high. One hand lingers on Dimitri’s wrist, just a moment.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.” The conversation ends there, Dimitri’s eyes sliding shut, breathing evening out. The last thing he registers before the cold of sleep sinks into him is the brush of Claude’s hair against his shoulder, the lightest press of something warm at his chest.

-

They move in the dawn, folding away their supplies, a crawling pace as they chatter and eat, shoving spoonfuls of mashed potato into their mouth. Claude appraises their supplies with a quirked brow, occasionally ducking to check with Byleth, scribbling something into the small book tucked away into his blouson. At some point he and Dedue meet to discuss gardening, or crops, and though Dimitri cannot fathom what planting a field will result in when they never stay in an area longer than a week, Dedue seems sufficiently pleased with the conversation.

They stumble upon a scuffle between the Empire and a rogue group of bandits. Byleth leads the charge, yelling, as their former students follow behind. Dimitri raises his spear and plunges it into the side of a bandit, blood splattering his hands, his cloak. Another two men jump at him, preparing to take him down in one tackle. They scream when he snaps one against the ground with ease, rounding on the other and squeezing tight at their head until it crumbles.

It’s instinct. It’s experience. It’s years and years and years of fighting, struggling, marching on fallen bodies of friend and foe and innocents, stained so cleanly with blood. It isn’t until he has a troop of the Empire, red garments overlaying their silver armor, that he sees Claude hiding amongst the trees. Armed, though not an arrow notched. Frozen, though alive, eyes steady as they track Dimitri.

Unnecessary deaths.

It’s been, perhaps, not much more than a month after Rodrigue.

Dimitri drops the man onto the floor, though it is too late. He had already shattered the man’s shoulder with ease, snapped his sword in two, spear plunged into his stomach. This enemy will die, painfully, acid spilling out to boil and eat at his body, until he will be just another forgotten man in this endless conflict.

“Boar!” Dimitri’s head snaps up as another man sends a fireball spinning at him. He dodges, grunting, spinning the spear in his hand.

“Get out of my way!” He shouts, smashing the end of Areadbhar into the mage. This is war. This is a battle, a stage of bloodshed, and Dimitri refuses to allow any more of his troops to die on the field than necessary. He refuses to allow himself that mercy, not here.

Not at the hands of a woman he cannot see, eyes hidden behind a mask.

Eventually, he too will fall. That is the truth of the world, the turnings of time, the calling of death that laps at his ankles with every draw of his spear, every movement of his army. But he has a dedication, a goal, a meaning well worth forging forth his life for. It is only fair.

“That’s enough.” Byleth’s voice cuts through the chaos, dwindling, as they snap their sword against the ground. Silence descends, careful, creeping, the few remaining troops of the Empire hastening back as the last of the bandits are cut away. Mercedes clutches Annette close, ducking behind the professor, and it is here that Dimitri can see the bloom of red at Annette’s side.

“Annette!” He snaps, rushing forward. The Empire startles, raising their weapons a second time, only to be slammed back by a round of warning arrows from Ashe and a mighty roar from Dedue, arms swung. A man holding a twisted dagger attempts to swing it into Dimitri, only to be stopped short by his snarl, spear smashing into his face, coming away bloody.

“That’s enough!” Byleth repeats, and the silence that descends this time is lasting, the last of their enemies wiped. Dimitri pants, wiping at the blood streaked onto his face, his armor, running to Annette. Felix makes it before him, ducking down to grasp at Annette’s shaking form.

“Annette! Annette!” They choir, Sylvain and Dedue coming up below. Ingrid flies over, Ashe casting wary glances over her shoulder, as Mercedes flashes them a soft smile.

“She’s fine. Just needs to rest.” Byleth is the first to pull back, allowing Felix to pull Annette into a hug. Dimitri nods, pulling back after assessing the red on his hands. Best not to dirty Annette with it, lest he make her panic. Ingrid drops to her knees, grasping at Annette’s hand, murmuring a soft prayer.

Claude lies in the trees. From here, his leg swinging over the branch, Dimitri can hardly make out the shape of his wyvern, his bow, the narrowing of his eyes. He raises a hand.

“Claude,” Byleth calls, walking past Dimitri. Claude drops to his feet, bow slung across his back, book tucked under his arm. His eyes lock on Byleth, mouth already moving, gesturing. Some plan, some scheme, clearly, likely based off renewed analysis. Real world experimentation.

It bothers Dimitri, in a peculiar way. He waves again.

Claude’s eyes flicker his way. He smiles, waving back, before returning to his conversation with Professor. Annette coughs, causing panic to ripple through Felix and Ingrid alike, pulling Dimitri back to the conversation.

He misses Claude pointing at him, a hard set to his mouth.

-

Peace is waning.

Daylight grows shorter, the creeping cold of winter approaching with every step. They don’t have blankets to double up on, instead opting to sleep in pairs following Dimitri’s example. Sylvain and Felix, Annette and Mercedes, Dedue and Ashe, Ingrid and Professor. It’s normal to stick close to your partner, eyes wary, ears perched, expecting noise and receiving silence.

Ashe is the first to catch a cold. They joke about it, poor timing, ill will, until Byleth coughs, a hand muffling the noise. Then Dedue, iron immune system and all, sniffles. Dimitri is the fourth, sneezing into his hand.

What would they do, if the Empire were to stumble upon them now?

Dimitri’s thoughts are forcibly shelved by the wet touch of a cold rag against his head. He shivers, flushing hot and cool, tremors shaking his spine with every breath. He had tried to spar regardless, claiming health, only to be swiftly beaten by Felix, who had loudly and angrily instructed that he be confined to bed.

It would be an awful shame for him to die, here, cold and alone in the midst of the woods, not even a battle. He would rather an eventful death, an impactful one. Perhaps death by the impalement of a thousand spears.

It’s war.

“I thought I said to stop thinking so much, or I’d knock you out myself.” Dimitri’s eyes glaze as they slide over to his companion. Claude wrings out another towel against a small bowl of water, no doubt one of their few reserves, and Dimitri can make out a colorful assortment of cloth behind him in various shapes and forms. They look awfully odd, funny, and he laughs.

“Oh, goddess, you better not be hallucinating again.” Hallucinating? Funny. Dimitri tries for a wry chuckle only to erupt into searing pain, a burst of coughs forced from his chest. His hands wrench in the blanket, feet kicking out, as tendrils of something squeeze tight at his lungs, press harsh at his heart. A sudden pressure grasps at his jaw and he snaps, teeth gnashing.

“Out of my way! I need—I need,” her head. Edelgard. White hair and purple eyes, pale skin marred with faded scars.

Dimitri shudders. Her. She. They were friends once. Family, even. Him and her. Dimitri and El. She had to go, and he had gifted her a dagger. Now, they are in war.

Is Edelgard an unnecessary death?

“Is she?” The slap of a pressure against his chest tightens, harsh, and he gasps. Firm fingers, strong despite their delicate grip, force his jaw open and he gags as a splash of water hits his tongue. Dry, so dry. He must have sweat it all out. Was that water his?

“Don’t worry about it.” Dimitri shivers, whines, feeling awfully pathetic. There’s a rumble pressed against his shoulder, wet from the splash, and then smooth movement of fingers against his scalp, pressing his hair back. Familiar. Familiar in an old way, years and years ago. He cannot recall last getting sick, likely a result of his crest.

Funny how that works. The thing that Edelgard despises the most and yet it keeps him, her, their companions—alive. He wonders, in the end, if it will be her who ends his life.

New voices break through the haze, high and soft. Mercedes, Ingrid. Annette. One of them, surely, has to be, unless they’ve also fallen ill. They’re in a sore spot then, if Mercedes is out. A hand, colder than the ones before, embraces his cheek. He sighs, turning to it, chasing its cool before it departs.

“He needs more—”

“… not sure if…”

“Dedue? … Syl… Sylvain…”

“Teach?” Oh. Dimitri’s eyes flutter open as he turns to his left. Professor is here, their eyes scanning a booklet of texts, Mercedes and Ingrid share soft words between them. Ingrid nods, departing with something shiny in her hand. Claude rumbles something, soft, a hand pressing Dimitri back against the pillow.

“Go back to sleep.” Unreasonable. Dimitri growls, butting his head against the hand. He may not be so clever as Edelgard nor Claude, nor would he consider himself so capable of inspiration, but he is nothing if not stubborn, determined, wanting for a better future for Fodlan. It is he who will inherit the name of King, he who will find peace for this war torn nation, bloodied history and peoples.

He refuses to die in a deserted clearing along the bodies of his friends, as though they are nothing but discarded bones and intestines from a hunt.

“He’ll probably sleep if you watch over him instead, teach.” The hand withdraws from his head, a pinch at his hair. Dimitri whines, pulling at the blanket. No. _N_ o. Come back. He wants—he wants—he wants

“I think he wants you.” Yes.

There’s a shuffling of something. Papers, perhaps, texts, or an exchange of bowls, water spilling at the edge. It must be that, the final one, for Claude pinches at his jaw again and forces chapped lips open. It hurts, _he_ hurts, raw and cold and warm and tired. Water spills into his mouth, overflowing, freezing. He gags, coughs, thrown back into the spiking pain that grapples with his lungs.

When Dimitri next wrenches open his eyes, night has fallen. The stars are so bright, here, in the midst of the forest, sparkling through cracks in the tree leaves. His eyes feel glassy, puffy, as they dance from light to light. Beautiful. Beautiful.

As lovely as the figure on his side.

“Water?” Dimitri shakes his head. Claude huffs, rising to his elbows to grasp the bowl regardless. A hand tugs gently at his hair, propping his head upward, his jaw falling open as though second nature. He is parched, surely, for the relief that swills in his body at the cool relief of liquid filling his body, wetting his tongue, cleansing his system. He must have gone through at least a fifth of their water supply alone, and he worries how much more Dedue may have gone through. It is a good thing, at least, that Sylvain had not fallen ill.

The water ends before his thirst is properly quenched. They truly must be running low. Dimitri quakes, tucking the blanket flush to his skin, shaking his head. Has Mercedes drank? Ingrid? Professor?

Claude?

“What?” Claude whispers. Oh. Right. Dimitri forgets that Claude is here, looming overhead, the shadow of his mouth shifting. It’s funny. He laughs.

“Please don’t be hallucinating,” Claude groans. Dimitri shakes his head, feeling. Silly. Funny. This fever must be getting to his head.

“Are all Almyrans gorgeous?”

“What?”

Funny. One would think that the dazzling night sky would devour Dimitri, his companions, his army. Instead, it’s Claude, instead, emerald eyes twinkling, skin radiant as the stars against the dark, ethereal. Real, in an odd sort of way, the way that shadows moving in the corner of one’s eye, the running of water along tree stumps, would be.

Real, cold, against Dimitri’s sweating face.

“Would you kill me?”

“I’m getting teach.” It’s cold fury, panic, need, that wrenches Dimitri’s hand from under his blanket, latching onto Claude. He’s tumbling out, half his body shivering against the onslaught of cold air sweeping his skin. Freezing, he’s freezing, chilled to the bone, though it is only sprawled out that he notes that Claude is colder still, tucked in his ripped blouson and puffy pants, not a blanket to be seen.

This blanket is not big enough for them both, yet Dimitri grapples it over their shoulders. Pressed close, Claude’s breath is visible as it crystallizes in the narrow space between them. He’s—quiet. Contemplative. Scheming.

If Dimitri isn’t careful, Claude may just plunge a dagger into his heart and twist. The only question is whether he wants such a thing.

“Let me go.” Quiet, not a struggle. Just Claude, his hands, freezing tips tracing patterns along Dimitri’s skin. Gentle prying fingers that pull free of his grasp, startling loose the wet patch on his head. “Let me get you a new one. You’re almost past the fever.”

Soft. Quiet. Sweet. If it were just a month before, Dimitri may have shoved right past him for Edelgard, screaming, deaf. It was—he was. No excuses. Even as his mind may spin and his tongue dry against the roof of his mouth. No excuses.

“Kill me.” Please. Dimitri rasps. Claude’s fingers press against his eyelids, tipping them downward. He shakes his head, messy tangles flipping about. No. No. He wants Claude to answer him.

“Go to bed.” Fatigue, familiar. He’s seen this before. Hasn’t he? Dimitri wavers, head bobbing. He thinks—he thinks.

“Please kill me.” There’s a press of something warm, soft, just the slightest bit dry skin chafing. It’s familiar. It’s so familiar.

“Go back to sleep.”

He blacks out.

-

The fever breaks in the dawn. Byleth leads the other fevered members down to a shallow river, running cold and rapid against their shins, nearly pulling Ashe under the current if not for Dedue’s fast reaction. Washed bowls line the shore, as well as their old clothing heaped into a basket meant for washing. Sylvain is the designated washer for the day, scrubbing harsh at their sweat and dirt stained cloths.

Claude and Felix join them with breakfast, boiled potatoes and carrots with salted cabbage. They eat in relative silence until Sylvain drops his bowl into the rapids, swept fast away out of the corner of their eyes. It is Dedue who breaks first, a rumbling laughter, a spark igniting. They’re speaking, laughing, Felix begrudgingly splitting his bowl with Sylvain, Dimitri offering his own. At a point Byleth collects their bowls, mentioning a desire to fish for their lunches. They’ve nowhere to go.

Old friends, new ones, playing in the rapids. Sylvain pulls Dimitri and Ashe into the water, kicking up waves, and then Felix is tackling him with a yell. Dedue steadies Dimitri, careful, gentle, his shaking frame a remark of laughter, not cold. He’s missed this.

Senseless fun. His eyes drift to the side, to Claude, simply wetting his feet on the shore. He walks over, every step a drag against the rapids. It must be the aftereffect of the fever, of bedridden hours, for he slips, eyes widening when the cold splash of water approaches his face.

A hand tugs harsh at his arm, shouting.

“Hey! Jeez, be careful.” There’s a twist to his lips, upset, as Claude pulls Dimitri upward. Dedue is right behind, grasping his other arm. Claude relents, hands letting slip, arms raised to his head as he steps back.

“Come join us,” Dimitri rasps. Demands. His head must be foggy, fuzzy, the rush of warmth to his cheeks a result of illness. It must be. Claude raises a brow, flickering between he and Dedue.

“Maybe later. Don’t want to scare Sylvain with my good looks.” Claude’s wink is simply a parting as he turns, taking careful steps back to the shore. Oh. His pants are wet, part of his shirt soaked through. The water only reaches their shins.

“Your highness, are you alright?” Dedue. Right. Dimitri nods, stepping back, cradling his arm. He’s fine. He’ll be fine.

Sylvain yelps when Felix kicks at his shin, forcing him to fall to his feet. The rapids blow him over with ease, earning loud laughter from Ashe, and even Dedue and Dimitri have to chuckle at the sight. Byleth waves from the shoreline, Ingrid perched at their side. The girls must be waiting to bathe.

“I should head back to camp.” He leaves first, soaking his hair into a worn rag, clothes cold against his skin. Dedue tries to follow, even Byleth’s eyes tracking, though Dimitri shakes them both off. They care for him, both of them, but Dimitri has no need for guardians. He is only going to consult Claude on their behavior, their strategies. His schemes, come to life, in Dimitri’s hands.

Seeing Claude squashes the worming of his heart. He is here, dry, pulling their sheets to lay them out in the sunlight. Dimitri waves, smiling, their eyes catching. Claude smiles back, sauntering forward, pulling Dimitri close.

“Do you remember last night?” Claude’s words are a breath against his skin, warm, harsh against the stark cold of the air, crystalizing. Dimitri shivers, eyes faltering. Last night? His fingers squeeze, tight. Last night. Last night.

Claude’s face against the stars.

“Last night? I-I don’t think I can recall.” Claude frowns, rolling his sleeves upward, pinching at his skin, a litter of scars at the surface. His feet take a step back, then another, shaking his head.

“I thought you were going to be truthful.” His tone is saccharine sweetness, beautifully artificial. There’s a pout pulling at his lips, eyes just the slightest slant. Dimitri knows he’s flushed, red, always so easy to such words. It’s always been that way. He’s always been this way. “What happened to our deal? You want me to leave that bad?”

No.

“Just you.” Dimitri pleads, hands grasping Claude’s wrists. Claude blinks, faltering, his feet sliding along the ground. “I-I just remember you. Your face. Your _eyes_. In the stars. Against the stars. Please stay.”

Claude hums, fingers warm as they fold against Dimitri’s fingers. Their fingers entwine, nails scratching at flaking skin. Dimitri watches the rise and fall of Claude’s chest, the slow slide of his eyes from their hands to his own. Asking. Wanting.

“Truth,” Claude appraises, and then he’s gone, slipped from Dimitri’s hand, the sound of their returning friends from the rapids. No. Not their friends. Dimitri’s. His.

Claude is a single strand of gold in their sea of blue, sparkling.

Dimitri must hold onto him.

-

“You really don’t remember?”

“No? Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Embarrassing? Nah. Well… maybe your snoring. Is that why Felix calls you boar?”

-

Claude’s companionship turns out to be an incredibly important decision, since it is him and Byleth together who work out entryways into the impregnable fortress, Fort Merceus. Certainly, there are no easy paths into the center; their previous plan was simply to storm the area with the best of their abilities. Yet, Claude and Byleth had discovered a number of paths into the building, most of which have crumbled from previous events throughout history, but one in particular that should work, allowing them to sneak past several guards.

It’s enough for a scheme that allows them to capture Casper early on, despite his angry struggling. Linhardt is much easier to subdue, largely because he takes one glance at Claude tagging along behind Dimitri to sigh, raising his hands.

(“I won’t be dragged along too, will I?”

“I have no idea. You think I planned to be here?”)

Byleth leads the charge, directing Dedue to grapple away Caspar and Linhardt, Ingrid, Felix and Sylvain leading the charge. Ashe follows behind, swift, Annette yelling as she charges, hammer raised. Mercedes steadies herself behind Byleth, arms ready. Dimitri nods to her, opposing their route, swinging Areadbhar upwards.

“Hate me if you must,” he whispers. Words that disappear into verdant wind, blown into pieces that scatter over the masked faces of unknown enemies, troops of a corrupt Empire long needing reformation. His eyes track onto Death Knight, the man’s form stiff, helmet turned towards professor. Mercedes.

This is not his battle.

But this is his war.

“Keep your eyes out!” Dimitri warns. There are a number of defensive armored areas, manned by Empire units, and he would rather knock them out than allow them to harm any of his friends. He charges forward, grunting as a sword nearly side sweeps at his head, ducking and swinging Areadbhar into the side of the Empire grunt. He swivels on his ankle, a wide sweep of his spear, eyes narrowed.

Caspar’s frantic shouting is muffled behind the whistle of arrows flying free, the startling warmth of magic set alive. Dimitri casts a bare glance at his behind, the sight of the Empire captives lingering behind, Caspar yelling, Linhardt sighing as he waves his hands, another projection of magic set at their boundary, shielding them from desperate attacks. Claude lingers behind them, silent, eyes sharp. They glitter even now, vivid among the flying red, solid even without his bow slung over his shoulders, not an arrow to be seen.

“Hey, hey, your highness! Don’t get distracted, now!” Sylvain’s grin is unwarranted on a battlefield soaked in blood, two wide red splashes marking his armor. He soars forward with two quick steps, plunging the head of his lance into the body of an enemy mage, their spell set on Dimitri fizzing out from lifeless hands. Dimitri yelps, eyes wide, as a shadow of hulking armor rushes behind Sylvain, gauntlets raised.

“You’re the distracted one!” Felix and Ingrid mirror, yelling as they gut the armored fellow, shattering the metals and spilling flesh and blood onto the brick floors. “Goddess, be careful,” Ingrid scolds, her pegasus rearing back, “Keep your eyes open! I don’t want to waste my time watching you.”

“Do not worry.” Dedue’s voice is barely a rumble, quiet, precise as he stands to full height at a captured tower, crumped bodies at his feet. “I will watch for his highness.”

“I don’t need any eyes on me. Remember your stations!” Dimitri commands, hissing as a fireball comes close to nicking his arm, the scalding heat threatening to lick up his flesh. He spins his spear in place, narrowed eyes, yelling as he charges forward. Areadbhar makes a pretty sight of the corpse that was once an enemy unit.

It is Byleth who leads them forward, back, around again. Sylvain is called back with Ingrid to provide better defense to Ashe and Mercedes, arrows and spells flying forward to pierce their enemies. In the frontlines is Dimitri, Felix, Dedue, striking fast and hard with vicious determination, blood and flesh and organs making art on stained grounds. Annette lingers behind them, her arms clutching fast at her hammer. It is vicious justice, righteousness, clearing the path for her. For Mercedes, standing tall, solemn, with every small step bringing her closer to him.

He is waiting.

“I thirst for blood.” He does, he must, if only to validate the streams of red and brown caking Dimitri’s fingers, the staff of his spear. Annette stumbles to his side, arms raised shakily, panting with slow breathes. Mercedes is behind her, hand clutched to his waist, loose hairs curling delicate around her face.

The length of her dress dances in the slightest breeze, her hands clenching, pulling, at the skirt with every soft wandering step. Her eyes, his, meet amongst their fallen allies, their angry friends. Felix grits his teeth, grinding noises echoing, as he stabs at the wandering corpses, granting the death they so desire. Bloody coughs and whimpers, open palms and grasping fingers, agape mouths awash with shattered teeth and smashed collars. A man with no ears, cut clean, face burnt to crisp with deep slits from arrows pulled clean adorning his body. He is dead, beyond dead, murdered and killed and set aflame.

His family will never hear of his final moments, choking and screaming in war.

“You,” Mercedes’ voice is light, judgement, holy air itself gathering at her temples, “try to hide yourself with that mask and helmet.” Dimitri breathes, drawing back, grasping Dedue with trembling fingers. If this were to go wrong—if they were to miscalculate—

No. No. It cannot go wrong.

“But I know who you really are.” It is her, and him, standing together. Byleth at her side, Annette on her other. Death Knight, alone, his companions cut down. His people destroyed. Himself, armored, single.

He raises his sword.

“Mercedes!” It is Dimitri, feet alight with fury, worry, ravenous protection, gathering Areadbhar in his fist and charging forward. It is Dedue, yelling after him, hands stained brown from fallen foes. It is Ingrid, and Sylvain, Felix, who stumble forward with a scream, narrow eyes, glittering weapons. It is Ashe, swiveling on the ground, the whistle of an arrow slipping free of his grasp. It is Byleth, clenching the Sword of the Creator, the shift of its whip clanging as it slashes along the ground. It is Annette, her arms raised high, the shrieking edge of her voice silenced as her crusher slams against Death Knight, shattering the armor folding him close.

It is Mercedes, crying out, her arms alight with life itself, as the sword in his hand falls loose form open fingers.

The screech of their weapons smashing along the grounds, red-stained marble, is no more than background for the crimson sorrow that blooms from Death Knight, his fallen body the final piece to the Empire’s crumbling defense. Mercedes cries, her throat squeezing shut as harsh sobs force her hands unsteady, fingers trembling as they slide off the helmet keeping the Death Knight secret.

Jeritza, Emilie. Her brother, disintegrating in her hands.

“What!” Even the immediate shushing by Linhardt cannot quell Caspar’s echoing shout. Felix stiffens, his swords dancing dangerously, Ingrid at his side with narrowed eyes. Caspar raises his hands, stumbling back, though his eyes remain still on the fallen body of his commander. Dimitri swallows, skimming the ground with the head of Areadbhar, eyes slipping to Dedue, his head bowed to Emilie.

Annette falls to her knees, hands sliding to grasp Mercedes’ shoulders, pulling her close. They cry, silent, together, sympathetic tears brimming at Annette’s eyes. Byleth steps back, nodding to their army, steps silent as they walk away.

Dimitri breaks from the crowd. Dedue steps to follow him, quiet from the raise of Dimitri’s hand. Solemn, private, reflection. Sylvain and Ingrid sheath their weapons, dropping down onto one knee at Mercedes’ side, bowing their head. A final farewell, the fall of Ashe’s hand against her hair, the slow steps of Felix drawing close, eyes on the crumpling form of their enemy.

No, not their enemy. He was Mercedes’ friend, brother, once. Now he is not that, nor their enemy, nor any title. Just ash, and blood, and dust. Just a corpse faded away.

Linhardt and Caspar are silent at Byleth’s side. Though Linhardt yawns, hands dismissive as his eyes focus on the lingering clouds overhead, Caspar’s eyes are suspiciously wet, mouth quivering as his hands furl at his sides. Claude is steps behind them, equally quiet, gaze slow in its wander along the floor.

There is nothing to see but blood and guts and shattered bones, the remains of life scattered along the tile.

“You’ve won.” Quiet, a whisper of a word. His hand waxes with the length of the string taut in his bow, sliver of arrows hanging from his shoulder. Byleth turns to him, their brows furrowed even as they nod. They did. They won.

Yet, the plummeting depth in Dimitri’s stomach protests the sentiment. His eyes track his own body, bloodied, burnt, weathered armor sunken in at areas. Truly, a survivor of war.

“We should find a river. It would be best for everyone to sleep early, today.” Byleth’s voice betrays their stony expression, a bare warble along the vowels. So it may be. Though Dimitri had never quite known Jeritza, certainly not enough to find himself a friend, he has known Mercedes for long enough for every choking sob of her to pierce him cleanly, eyes shriveling under the pain. It is best for him to stand here, a distance, from her mourning form.

It is, after all, his command that ended in such a way.

“Was this unnecessary?”

The words slip out of his lips. Byleth stiffens, their hands gripping at Caspar and Linhardt, the former continuing to quell his tremors, the latter’s eyes darting meaningfully to Dimitri. It is Claude, lingering, who tilts his head forward. He is clean, gold, sparkling, a remarkable contrast to the bloodied scene at their feet, their eyes, hanging heavy in the air. His hands fall open, free from his bow, a wide sweep at the remains in every angle, every turn of Dimitri’s head.

Red, and brown, the smell of iron and death. The sound of Mercedes’ sobs, Annette’s quiet ones at her side, solemn silence from his friends. Allies, alive, at such cost. At any cost, for them, in here, in war.

“It’s war,” Claude answers. Linhardt stares, his hands tight. “Isn’t it?”

It will be nearly a month before Dimitri can cleanse his clothing of brown flakes and faded splatters. It will be much shorter before Mercedes will smile at him. Much longer before she will smile at him truthfully. Forever before she can forget the face of her brother.

It’s war.

-

They take the early bath, quiet dinner. Mercedes is the first to descend into her chambers, if they can be called that, no more than bare bone bedding and wood laid flat on the dirt. Annette retires soon after, her eyes hollowed with sympathetic grief, and soon after her trails Felix, who sits with them both. Ashe and Ingrid recruit Sylvain to aid them in cleaning the wrappings that held their food. In a matter of moments, the only ones left sitting around are Dimitri, Dedue, Byleth, Claude, and their two new friends.

Caspar and Linhardt.

“You can’t keep us prisoner! That’s just wrong!” Despite the hissing words, Caspar’s voice is quiet, dim, his eyes making poor disguise of the frequent darting towards Mercedes’ corner. His hands hold tight on his knees, tugged close, face shaking against the hollow armor he refuses to take off. He is grimy, sticky with sweat and blood, having refused to bathe.

“Then leave.” Dimitri raises an eyebrow at Linhardt. He hadn’t expected the sleepy man to be so adapt to their mottled crew, but Linhardt had wandered within conversations with ease, bare boredom evident on his face. Linhardt meets his glance with his own pointed one, a hand shifting back to tug on Caspar’s hand.

They both glance at Ashe’s drooped form over the dishes, Ingrid and Sylvain whispering soft words into his ears.

“I’m not keeping anyone prisoner,” Dimitri corrects, coughing into his fist. Something akin to a snort comes from his right, where he’s quite certain Claude’s sitting, legs crossed lazily. “I am just—I didn’t want to—um.” Dedue presses his hand against Dimitri’s back, patient, kind, always, even as Dimitri falters and stutters and fails to amend the smallest of things. His eyes dart towards Byleth.

“We believe in a Fodlan without unnecessary deaths.” Claude’s sharp intake of breath is a pleasure to note, dimming against the fall of Byleth’s eyes. They roll their fingers over the folds of their pants, wrinkled fabric worn down by constant travel, peering from Dedue to Dimitri, to Claude, to Linhardt and Caspar.

“I… don’t want to hurt any of my students.” Caspar ducks his head, properly shamed, even as Linhardt bobs in acknowledgement. It’s been a time, a long time, since Dimitri had a chance to properly hear Byleth emote, their hands waxing in the air as words bubble and float. “This may be war, but it isn’t slaughter. You were… my students, too, once. I’d like to see your children one day.” If they make it. If there’s anything left to live on, untouched ground between the three rulers.

“I’m only sorry I arrived so late.” The words barely slip past Byleth’s mouth before they burst into words.

“No!”

“Professor, please, that’s not what—”

“Teach, come on!”

“We are incredibly thankful for you.”

“Byleth, you’ve only been _gre—”_

Their protests are halted by Byleth raising a hand, their brows quirked. The momentary lull is punctuated by the settlement of their words in the air, the dawning realization that, even outside of the classroom, they’ve clearly not grown past their affections for their professor, former mercenary or not. It isn’t until Byleth’s mouth quirks into a slow smile, the beginnings of a rumbling laugh shaking their shoulders, that their volume returns.

“That’s not how we feel! We missed you!” Caspar yells. His voice echoes in the air, arms outstretched, jolting to his feet to stand tall. They quiet, staring, until Linhardt clears his throat, glancing upward to Byleth.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I’m, I’m also glad that we could meet again.” Though his words dull, the steely resolve in Linhardt’s eyes is truthful. Caspar nods, huffing, his arms coming down to angle at his waist, the squeaky creak of his dulled armor.

“Me too.” Quiet, soft, forcing Dimitri to rear his head over. Claude smiles at them, something more genuine in a moment than he can recall ever truly seeing on his classmate’s faces. “I missed you, teach.”

Dimitri swallows, feeling remarkably displaced from the choir of sentiments. He’s—he’s been lucky enough to _have_ Byleth on his side this whole time, from dawn to dusk in these shortening days, frozen solid by plummeting degrees. Even from long ago, years past in the academy, knowing that he would have Byleth if nothing else. Had Claude known a reassurance like he? Had Edelgard?

What would life be like, if Byleth had been in their lives an equal?

“Perhaps we should retire for the night. It’s been a long day,” Byleth sighs, gathering their things and standing. They glance over to Caspar and Linhardt, perched together. “You two are free to stay and sleep with me. That may be best,” their eyes flicker over to Dimitri, Dedue, “perhaps we can all sleep together.”

“A sleepover? You’re really clever, aren’t you, professor!” Caspar’s laughter is much too noisy for the chill of the night, yet it quirks a smile from Byleth before they descend into the corners of their camp, pulling out blankets and layers. They trail after Byleth, helping them gather sleeping supplies. Caspar and Linhardt can sleep on either side of Byleth, sandwiched by Dedue and Dimitri alike. Dimitri pauses, unwinding the blanket in his arms.

Claude is still by the dwindling fire, a growing mess of papers and books at his feet.

“Aren’t you going to bed?” The light of the flames dances over the slopes and curves of Claude’s face, hollowing out his features. He seems almost wild, like this, a being in the darkness dawning to the light. Dimitri swallows, a slow step forward, repeating his words. “Claude, aren’t you coming?”

“And here I thought you’ve already moved on. Caspar and Linhardt can’t warm you up?” Dimitri flushes, Claude’s exaggerated sigh unnecessary. His hands tighten on the blanket, wrinkling the fabric with a soft whine. Claude laughs, rocking on the backs of his hands, legs crossing and straightening by the flames.

“I’m trying to be serious, Claude. It’s been a long day. We truly must rest.” His eyes seem amber, gold, even, against the crackling yellow of the fire. Claude straightens, scooping up his texts, stretching his arms behind his head. His left foot knocks a stick into the fire, new crackling flames licking at the wood.

“Sure.” Easy, simple. “Let’s go to bed, Dimitri.”

He’s seen this before.

-

There’s something heavy, hard, squeezing down on his neck. He’s—he’s dying, he thinks, dying and ascending and living all at once, pain splattering throughout his body. He’s exploding into an infinity of stars, sparkling, their eyes a spear that plunge into his body, gouging his pain, drawing his blood. There’s light beckoning at him, folding his fingers, a gentle weight on his body. Flush. Embracing, pulling him free of his body. Confines. Collar.

“Dimitri.”

Let me go.

“Dimitri.”

Let me go.

“It’s just a nightmare.”

Let me go 

Let me go

Letmegoletmego _letmego_

“Bed, Dimitri.”

Warmth.

Something smoothing at his temple, pressing at his cheeks. Warm, and foggy, familiar. He is home, somewhere, gently tucked into blankets, the beginnings of mother’s singings drawing upwards. He’s—young. Tiny. So many years ago, awoken by something. Anything.

The sound of a dagger slicing his skin.

“Go to bed.”

He’s dying.

Ah, thank you, goddess.

He’s dying.

-

The sun is well into the sky, punctuated by the loud crowing of flitting birds, the sweet scent of fresh snow broken up dawning snowberry flowers, by the time Dimitri’s eyes pierce his darkness. His limbs feel remarkably light for a day after a harsh battle, the usual thrashing of nightly worries a high after being so thoroughly soaked in blood. He sighs, shuffling upward, running a hand through his hair. Or, at least, he attempted to.

Claude is nestled into his side, his hand properly captured against Claude’s neck, the tickle of his hair on Dimitri’s fingers.

Huh?

Dimitri freezes, biting down on his lip. His eyes dart the other way, revealing two empty spots where blanket and covers were once placed down. There’s fallen snow spilled into those spots, now crushed under Caspar’s sleeping form, his arm lazily thrown over Linhardt as he snores. Linhardt’s hair is curled gently around, caught in Caspar’s hand, every shallow rise and fall of his chest a gentle breath that rustles the blue hair. Drawn over them is two thicker blankets, no doubt Byleth and Dedue’s workings.

There’s one blanketing him and Claude as well. It’s—he’s awfully close, _they’re_ awfully close, pressed together skin to skin, thin undershirts ruffled and stretched from a night of fitful sleep.

Perhaps not so fitful, if the gentle smoothness of Claude’s brows is any indication. For all his easy-going smirks and winks, it is still a surprise to see something akin to a smile on his face, a tick of his lips upward, the soft curve of his jaw against his hand. Claude breathes, sighs, something little more than a passing of air, warmth ghosting over Dimitri’s fingers. Dimitri shivers, unable to quell the sudden flush creeping upward, causing Claude to jerk against his hand, mumbling.

“Dima…?” There is nothing fair in the sudden thundering of Dimitri’s chest, screeching in his ears, alarms crawling up his arms. Claude’s eyes flicker open, slow, errant confusion pulling at his face. He’s—he’s drowsy, clearly, must be, for the easy climb against Dimitri’s chest, the crook of his face against Dimitri’s hand.

“C-Claude.” He is eighteen again, a student in an itchy uniform attending long lectures, balancing spear training with archery and faith. Dimitri, watching the wisp of his breath in the cold air, who cannot still the pull of his eyes to familiar laughter, stilted. Claude had been freezing, so unbearably cold that every shake of his jaw had broken up his words, usual teasing unable to continue through his shivering. When their eyes had met, it was Dimitri who had walked closer, gesturing to his cloak.

“Are you cold?” His tongue betrays him, memory breaking as Claude shifts onto his elbows, eyes focusing. His jaw tightens, falls loose, easy, just too much so. Dimitri’s broken it, this, the crystalline moment between them.

Claude falls back against his side, lids falling shut, the press of his cheeks against Dimitri’s hand. Soft, his jaw working. Slow, breathing even.

“Warm me up.” Words from five years ago, pressed close in the courtyard, watching fallen snow.

The ground may be nothing more than dirt with dirtied towels and Dimitri’s fur to provide cover, their blankets worn with holes and torn by wild trashing and fights, yet Dimitri finds it remarkably easy to let his breathing slow, his fingers gentle as they trace the shape of Claude’s skin, his hair, closing the space between them. Flush, close like this, their breaths freeze in the air, frosty sighs puffing gently. Claude murmurs, a rumble of his chest, as he draws an arm to grasp Dimitri, burying his face into his chest. Warm.

“Woah.”

Dimitri falls back, biting down on a startled yelp as reality smashes in, Caspar’s face peering over Linhardt’s shoulder. Claude pops his own eyes upward, lidded so purposefully lazily that Dimitri shivers, the edge of danger prickling at his skin.

“C-Casper! What, we, um, this is—” Heat betrays him, pink filling his cheeks, forcing Dimitri to silence his stammering.

“Go back to kissing Linhardt.” Huh? The air may well whistle with the sheer force of Dimitri’s neck cracking as he whips back to Claude’s narrowed eyes and pinched cheeks, something of a pout twisting at his lips. Caspar offers none of the restraint Dimitri had, choosing to yelp before grabbing Linhardt, shaking his form.

“How did you know! Okay, wait, wait! Linhardt! Linhardt, can we tell them?” Trust Caspar to diminish the mood and then replenish it with sheer energy. Linhardt’s groan is warbled with every shake of his shoulder, his head bobbing forward and back. Yet, angled away from Caspar, there is no mistaking the beginnings of a smile flickering at his lips.

“They already knew. Well, Dimitri knows now.” Indeed, though he’s unsure what exactly he’s expected to _do_ with this information. Dimitri swallows, his eyes falling down, the sounds of Caspar clinging and speaking washing over him. He wishes the ground would simply do him a favor and swallow him up.

It’s Claude, always him, tugging at his hand with the bare rumblings of laughter. Goddess knows he’s amused, finding fun in the dreary awakening, horrified as Dimitri is. Though, honestly, it’s part of his charm.

Everything is part of his charm.

“Let’s get going. I think the lovers want to be left alone.” _Lovers_. Dimitri just knows his face is burned red, warm enough to replace the fires they cook on. The tinkling of Claude’s amusement is all that spurs him to take another step onward into the camp clearing.

They are not the only ones to sleep in, the clearing a mild clamor of noises, bumping bowls and soft words. Annette is barely awake, her lids heavy as she nods against Mercedes’ shoulders, her hand grasping at Felix’s bobbing knee, his sword slung across his shoulder. Dedue occupies her other side, waxing his fingers in her hair, balancing three bowls of crushed grains and carrots. Byleth is gone from the clearing, no doubt either scouting the area or hunting, judging from the consistent jerking of Felix’s head to either side.

“Dimitri!” Sunny, bright, the burst of a smile on Mercedes’ face. She is alive, still, even if her brother is not. Annette startles at her side, snorting loudly as she kicks out, whacking Felix. They groan in unison, darting apart, Annette blinking dizzily as Felix muffles a hiss, grasping his thigh. Dedue nearly drops his bowls, gathering them up to his neck.

It is Byleth, appearing with two bloodied raccoons in hand, a sizable bucket of fish in the other, who breaks the scene. They peer over, a single brow raised, before dropping their prizes onto the snow.

“Breakfast.” They really must be freshly caught, especially given Dimitri is quite certain those fish are shivering. Annette squeaks, though it is Felix who shouts.

“We can’t eat raw fish!”

Dimitri grins despite himself, preparing to calm Felix’s fuming anger, Annette’s wincing as the fish seem to flop. There is a pinch at his side, and he turns, the grasp of fingers pulling at his shirt, the press of a curved mouth pressed against his shoulders. Laughter, sincere. Claude’s giggles float around his head, dazzling, the warm flush of his cheeks pressed at the crook of his nape.

“You guys are ridiculous. Let’s cook some fish.”

Dimitri nods. He’s not certain he could have done anything else.

His heart betrays him still, thudding thunderous in his chest.

-

It is, perhaps, the fact that snow blanket sceneries have always looked the same to Dimitri that makes mornings so familiar, a lingering sense of forgotten unease locked away. Fodlan has truly begun to meet the depths of winter months, every moment another gust of wind, another brush of snow, the chilling bite of cold nipping at their skin.

Though they pray for the fallen soldiers who have led them for so long, they share thanks for their equipment, bundling new blankets, tossing worn out boots and gears. Of course, Areadbhar stays resolutely in his hand, even as he adorns new gauntlets, lines his cape with a new pelt. Claude finally repairs his outerwear, and Dimitri is pleased to see familiar blue draped over his shirt, a new layer to warm him.

Nothing, though, seems to warm him quite so much as Dimitri himself. Their nights are spent properly curled together, tucked under layers of felt and fur. Dimitri cannot recall a time he fell to the sweet call of sleep so quickly.

Not since, well, a long time, ago.

Dimitri shakes his head, tilting backward against his furs. He’s begun to grow used to the daily flush of warmth that accompanies Claude’s absolute refusal to acknowledge his personal space, any semblance of societal expectations. It’s… calming. Safe.

Peace in war.

Casper and Linhardt chose to stay—or, honestly, Caspar demanded to accompany them, determined to help Mercedes find solace. Linhardt had simply come along, usually opting for Caspar to help carry him partway. On the bright side, they’ve gotten Caspar to bathe. On the other, the awkward oddities of new members, former enemies, joining the team have resurfaced. At the very least, Ashe is getting along remarkably well with them.

Ashe has also fallen for Petunia, as has Dedue, and Annette, and essentially every member of his army. Even Dimitri himself cannot refuse the gentle wyvern, her sparkling eyes as masterful at handling people as her master. If she were to ever desire to take over Fodlan for herself, well, Dimitri cannot fathom that she would have any issues with her conquest. He informs Claude as much.

“Petunia is going to rule Fodlan before I do.” It’s a joke, just a passing comment, simply needling for want of a sparkle of laughter, the crinkling of Claude’s eyes. Claude hums, peering upward, nuzzling free from Dimitri’s arms. It’s an awful shame, the cold air immediately ducking into the small cracks of space between them.

Dimitri expects the teasing, the taunting. He expects the wink, the smirk, the crook of Claude’s chin.

He is not expecting the darkening of Claude’s eyes, the pointed edge of his teeth.

“Who’s to say I’m not going to steal it from you first?”

Oh.

Dimitri freezes, jaw clicking shut, as Claude rolls onto the backs of his knees. Their blankets fall, pooling to their side, and he is suddenly, acutely aware of the weight pressed on his body, of Claude fitting perfectly at the curve of his waist. Claude dips forward, close, so close, the fall of his hair brushing at Dimitri’s cheeks.

They were flush just a minute ago, and yet, tracking the length of his lashes, the wet shine of his lips, Dimitri suddenly feels like they are squeezed tight, the sky itself collapsing into them, folding them close.

“I, um, I didn’t.” Too warm, the layers on their bodies, the weight of fleece on their feet. Had he offended? Had he hurt? No, no. Not that.

There isn’t pain flickering in Claude’s eyes. It’s something stinging much more viciously.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.” Soft, a scoff, a chuckle. Fingers at his temple, running his hair back. Familiar, warm. Smooth.

He’s seen this before.

“I’m awake.”

Claude’s fingers still at his scalp, blond locks entangled in his fingers, running along his palm. They fall at once, slipping across Dimitri’s face, as Claude’s hand snaps back, the chill of the air between them making Dimitri shiver. Claude’s face is frozen, blank, before an easy smile slides on his face.

“Yeah, me too. Guess we should get ready for the day, huh?” With that, Claude slides back fully, blankets falling off his ankles, exposing Dimitri entirely to cold. He should—he should say something. Apologize. For what?

He’s seen this before.

“Kill me.” Claude blinks, still, his hand crooking at the hem of his pant, glancing downward. He is silent, still, for a moment as chilling as the icy clouds in the air. Smiling, a constant, just smiling.

“What?” False surprise or bland refusal?

“Kill me.” Truth. He’s sworn to be honest.

Claude’s smile has sloped off, his lips a thin line. His hands slope upwards, the barest tingle of his fingers brushing at Dimitri’s sides, his chest, pinching the fabric of his shirt. Dimitri lays flat, or perhaps, he cannot do much but lay flat. His arms must be heavy. His legs must be heavy. The only thing not heavy is his jaw.

“Claude.” The hands still, fingertips just scratching at his collar.

“Dima.” Ah. Dimitri can smile, still, eyes digging into Claude.

“Kill me. Please.”

The pressure on his neck is gentle, so gentle, soft and pressing and unrelenting, nothing more than blind force against the bob of his throat. Dimitri swallows, feeling himself shake, feeling the pressure shift. Claude swallows in tune, hands tightening a second more, closer. Warmer. He can breathe. He can breathe still.

Is it the loss of air that makes his skin glow so beautifully?

“Beau…ti…ful…”

Warmth, soft. The gentle press of skin, hair, lips. Something so lovely, so sweet, so human. Claude, gold, glittering, his lonely fallen star.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.”

He will never let him go.

-

Thin red lines, deep purple bruises. Primal instincts, in their truest fashion.

Marks of red and red and red, decorated in layers of gold and lace and the softest blanket of white chiffon, falling over them. A vibration of a sigh pressed against an ear, the flush of warmth against his stomach. The tightening of something along his thigh.

A whine, high, falling. A star descending from the sky, locked in chains.

He wants, he wants, _he wants_.

His hands dig into the curve of flesh, digging lines into the dark skin, shining, shimmering. Something rumbles against him, shrill, soft, the cosmos itself folding in above his body, flickering as brightly as light itself. He growls, he pants, he needs, drawing blood with a bite, rutting dangerous. A beast to his own desires.

Mesmerized. Hypnotized.

Dimitri needs.

Claude is—Claude is. Ethereal. Otherworldly. A being made of dust and ash and tears and the world itself, brighter than any day, darker than any night. He is the dawn and the dusk, the beginning, the end. The owner, the owned.

“Go to bed.”

The collar around Dimitri tightens, fast, harsh. He pants. He whines. He groans. Warm, dizzying warmth. When Claude breathes, his mind spins.

Not a molecule of air can force its way between them, caught tight, Dimitri’s arm wrapping him close. The slide of their bodies is lovely, so lovely, especially so when Claude squirms in his arms, a quiet rasp to his ear.

If he is to be chained

If he is to be collared

If he is to be tied down by this deal

So be it.

Hands across his throat, forcing him silent. The press of warmth against his temple.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.”

Fragile, delicate. A glass ring, twinkling in the light. Sincere, even against that false disposition, gentle, betraying his own actions. Kind, so much so that the thought of war cuts so deeply. If Dimitri were, if he were, he could smash Claude right now. Grasp the chains binding him close, force him onto his back, ruin him completely. Shatter his bones, his insides, his spirit, crush him so brutally that there would never again be a sliver of that silver tongue he is so fond of using.

Dimitri wants to die in these hands, bound by these rules.

“Kill me.”

If he were to explode into the cosmos, disintegrate into dust, Dimitri would be at peace.

Wielder of Areadbhar, leader of Faerghus. Necessary death.

-

Dimitri awakes, alone in the dark. He’s warm, overheating, suddenly aware of the depth of blankets covering his skin, swaddling him completely from head to toe. He groans, shifting onto his elbows, pushing upwards. Registering the room. Right.

They had been lucky enough to find the remains of a ransacked home. Not too much food that hadn’t spoiled, but there was operating electricity, and the promise of warmth. Water. New supplies to replace their old, Dedue and Mercedes occupying their time by the fireplace sewing up torn holes and loose stockings. There was a meat hook, a rarity in most homes, and Byleth, Sylvain and Ingrid alike had taken to spearing down wild hogs to salt and roast. The first nights were simple, peaceful in assorting the items and settling in. The third had been a feast, hog sliced thin and drizzled with preserved fruit jams yet to spoil, slightly stale bread pieces. Even the potatoes, cabbage and carrots, their everyday offerings, seemed splendid and joyful with thickened oils poured over.

That was two nights ago. The next morning, dizzy from the joys of delicious food, high from the cheers and laughter of his crew, Dimitri had overstepped. Asked too much.

He remembers, now.

Trust, lust, fear. Raw spikes of fury and resentment, the coldest chill of facades. Smiles that mean nothing, frowns that mean the world. The trails of gold and silver that seem to drape over Claude so naturally, his eyes emeralds that capture Dimitri so tightly, make him want to adorn himself in them. He cannot, when Claude had fled the scene in a myriad of shadows, left Dimitri spinning without a gemstone to possess.

He’s almost tempted to pluck them from Claude and craft a ring to hold them in. But it would be so upsetting, knowing they would never be so beautiful as encased in Claude himself.

The thought makes Dimitri sick.

Funny, how heavy his limbs drag, slow to remove the blankets from his figure. He’s never been sensitive to the cold, having grown in one of the chilliest cities in Fodlan, yet he shivers now. It’s a deep-seated freeze, something digging into his chest. Guilt.

Deep, deep guilt.

It cuts further into him than the width of his flesh, so thoroughly ripping him apart. The look on Claude’s face—Dimitri grinds his teeth. He should have said no. He should have left.

How could he, gasping under Dimitri’s body, hooked so helplessly to his form? How could he refuse, when his life could be crushed so easily under Dimitri’s hands, when his only companions were miles away, bloodstains in this unholy war?

How could Dimitri expect Claude to do anything but lie with that beautiful smile carved into his face?

Byleth offers him a tired nod when Dimitri descends the stairs. It’s too dark, sometime before dawn, yet Dimitri is only mildly surprised to see his professor awake. Byleth is nursing what seems to be a warm drink in their hands—tea, most likely.

There’s another cup at their side, stale cookies. Dimitri’s been expected.

“Hello, professor. You’re up late.” Funny, his words are as tasteless as the crumbs pressed into his mouth. The cookie crumbles, unable to hold its form, and Dimitri finds himself taking out his anger on it with a hard grind of his teeth. He grasps another and shoves it into his mouth, mashing the two against his tongue.

Byleth raises an eyebrow, gesturing to the tea. Well, Dimitri can’t figure he looks remarkably civilized, stuffing himself with broken treats.

“Thank you.” Crumbs spray from his mouth and he does fluster, just the tad bit, when it earns him an amused quirk of Byleth’s lips. Dimitri sighs, taking a seat and downing half the tea. It’s scalding, his tongue rejecting the heat instinctively, yet he forces it down. He feels an awful lot like being in pain.

The empty space in his bed could be punishment enough, if it weren’t self-imposed.

“Bad dreams?” Memories, though not awful ones. Dimitri shakes his head, careful to place the tea back before it spills over the rim. He doesn’t want to regale Byleth the sudden visions that have occupied his head, made his mind spin, forced his sleeping mate away. It wouldn’t be fair to them to hear it.

Claude’s face, his body, his smile, pearly white and sickening sweet if it weren’t so dangerous. Claude, gasping under his weight, the quiet calls of familiar faces grasping Dimitri’s neck, his shoulders, his stomach. Forcing him over, looming, begging for a death that he so desperately wishes for, even with the death of Rodrigue hanging high. Especially with the death of Rodrigue.

They asked for death, for vengeance, for something tangible and real and bloody, and Dimitri had soaked himself so thoroughly in their thirst that he was lost in a sea of murky purple greys, the mixing of his stained furs and the remains of his foes, his allies, people he could have once called classmates. Alone, floating in nothing, until a jingle of something flashed by. Until he had forced his eye open, seeing glossy stars, seeing falling snow.

Seeing green eyes blinking down on him, the press of something to his face. Comfort. Pleasure. Desire.

How could Dimitri say no, if Claude hadn’t?

“It’s snowing.” Dimitri blinks, reality returning to his bones. Right. He’s cold, teeth chattering slightly, though the crackling warmth of the fireplace is awfully calming to listen to. Byleth sinks their teeth into a cookie, slow, chewing it aimlessly as they glance out the window to the flakes outside. Snow is quickly becoming an everyday occurrence, which would be lovely if it weren’t hampering their travels so.

Dimitri would like to get to Enbarr before the end of the month.

“It is.” Byleth trains their eyes on Dimitri again, placing their tea cup down with a sound click. Dimitri winces. Funny, years later, how easily he relents to Byleth’s teaching’s still. His professor even in war.

“Your bed must be cold.” The words force a quirk from Dimitri’s lips, though he can’t muster up much amusement. Ironic, how sharp Byleth’s blunt words could be. He shrugs, picking again at his tea, breathing in the scent.

“I’m used to it. I was raised in Faerghus, after all.” Winters were long, harsh winds blowing doors shut before the chill could properly creep in, ruining young and old. Dimitri hums, tracing figures into the wood. “It is a good deal colder for some of our newer members.”

Linhardt. Caspar.

Claude.

Byleth nods, though they don’t offer any more conversation. Tea has always been quiet, with them, more gentle prods and observations than anything. Dimitri has a sinking feeling Byleth has an awful lot to say, just that they would rather not. Then again, professor has never been one for words.

Not even scolding for Dimitri, trembling alone by his own words and actions. Perhaps Byleth set up tea in prediction of Dimitri’s presence.

“Oh.”

Or perhaps not.

Ingrid raises an eyebrow at their inevitable sorry state, clearly chilled from her time patrolling. Right. He’s nearly forgotten about their patrol schedule, and the order struggles to rise to his mind.

“Hey!” It’s answered rather easily for him when Claude descends the stairs. He’s clad in full uniform, puffy jacket, oversized pants. It is the depth of blue, thick, familiar, that freezes Dimitri in place.

His own fur cape, draped over Claude’s shoulder still.

“I’m going to freeze my butt off,” Claude laughs, winking at Ingrid. Teasing. Sweet. She scoffs, smacking his arm with familiarity. Right. Dimitri forgets it still, how accustomed his friends have gotten to Claude’s presence. And hadn’t they had to, with how closely Dimitri stuck Claude into their circle, with how loyal Dimitri followed Claude’s every word, every scheme?

Hadn’t they had to, with chains neat around Claude’s ankles?

“Hey, teach.” Claude notices Dimitri finally, glancing over to him and for a fraction of a moment Dimitri can almost imagine the slipping of his smile, the shock struck frozen. Then it broadens, wide, as generously false as any of his past transgressions. “Dima.”

Then the door slaps shut behind him.

“Ouch.” Indeed. Byleth nods to Ingrid’s wince, and then she’s shaking off the snow from her cape, letting it droop to the floor as she appraises the smatterings of tea and cookies remaining. Byleth’s presence here suddenly makes significantly more sense, as does their arrangement. Dimitri swallows, suddenly wishing he hadn’t come down at all.

Dimitri hasn’t been allowed to patrol yet. He can’t say that he’s particularly surprised about the decision.

“I think I drank your tea.” He’s quite certain of it, actually. Ingrid offers something of a sigh, a roll of her eyes as her spear drops to the side.

“There’s more tea. Want some?” Dimitri shakes his head, scooting off the chair and standing off. He’s preparing to disappear, preferably back to his room to lick at old wounds, when Ingrid interrupts him with a shake of her head, gesturing at the cookies. “I didn’t say you had to go.”

“I should go to bed.”

The words slip out of his mouth without meaning, though it is only a beat faster that they register. Dimitri feels his face warmth, betraying, tongue suddenly tied and uneasy. Ingrid raises an eyebrow, though she finally sits, pouring herself a cup. The tea is still warm enough to steam, and she sips at it without breaking eye contact. Byleth’s presence, quiet, is no help. Dimitri sweats.

Whatever words hanging on Ingrid’s tongue fades, her brows softening as she takes a deeper glance at Dimitri. They haven’t had proper time to simply… unwind like this, in a long time. Not, at the very least, since five years back.

All, any, calming of Dimitri had only come at the expense of too much. He doesn’t expect her mercy, nor her pity. He doesn’t particularly want it.

Then again, Dimitri’s never been particularly good at getting what he wants.

“It must be strange, to sleep alone again.” Ingrid’s words are carefully placed, sipping delicately at her tea a moment after. Dimitri shifts in place, though he fails to quell the burning of his cheeks. It was his own words, his own request, and yet—

He knew he would regret asking Claude to leave. He just didn’t realize the extent of it.

“It’s alright.” Dimitri’s voice betrays him, warbling dangerously. He’s never been particularly good at lying, and though Ingrid often enough lets him pass, the crook of her brow suggests against any further attempts tonight. He glances to Byleth, but they have nothing to add but the silent crunch of another sweet.

Conversation peters off, just like that. Ingrid eats two cookies in succession, swallowing down her tea and pouring another cup. She offers it to Dimitri, glaring at him when he refuses. Byleth continues sipping at their own seemingly endless drink until they relent, letting the cu and plate clink.

Then they are up, cape floating at their ankles, glancing at Dimitri.

“Goodnight, professor.” Byleth nods at them both, gingerly picking up the sword tucked under their chair. It slides into their hand with easy familiarity, slicing at the ground, before their eyes are back to Dimitri. Unblinking, unflinching.

“He’s going to freeze.” There’s no questioning who _he_ is. Dimitri sputters, made worse by Ingrid shaking her head, scoffing.

“Don’t bother. He won’t listen,” she pauses, then, glancing between them, “well. Not to us.”

It’s unfair. Professor and Ingrid alike look at him expecting—what? Fury, or outrage, or despair. He doesn’t know, standing feeling numbly like nothing at all.

“I’m going to bed,” he repeats. It’s not a retreat.

Dimitri’s an awful liar, even to himself.

-

“Get out.”

“What happened to being honest?” Claude’s laughing. Of course he’s laughing, smiling, that glitter in his eyes, that glow to his cheeks. Dimitri wishes, not for the first time, that he had an ounce of deception Claude had, a milliliter of his ability to see through lies. Just enough to know that Claude’s laughter was—fake. Illusion.

It has to be.

“You don’t want this.” Dimitri shakes his head, pulling back. Now that he’s looking, _looking_ , he sees them. Scratches and scars fresh on dark skin, the fading bruises of bites. Flowers of purples and blues from a scuffle outside of combat. Indents the size of fingers, pressed along his hips.

“Please, leave.”

Claude’s laugh dies off, though his smile doesn’t fade, sloppy, wrong. Awkward against the rise of his shoulders, the bend of his knees upward. He looks awfully small like this, perched on the edge of the bed. Perhaps he’s always been small to Dimitri.

It made it awfully easy to pull him down.

“I told you no lies, remember? Our deal?” Their deal. They made a deal.

“Then get out.”

Claude shrugs, easy, simple. However, his smile fades, the thinning of his lips. They’re still—pink. Bruised. Sore, likely, from when Dimitri forced his onto him. Grasping, biting, eating.

Claude is so _small_.

“Leave!” Dimitri roars, slamming his hands against the mattress. The bed bounces, loud thudding against the wall, and even so Claude does little more than blink. Not a movement for his weapon. Not a movement to retreat.

Sitting on his bed still, unfairly beautiful in his nudity. Dimitri cannot quell the tremor in his hands, the darting of his eyes to Claude’s chest as it rises and falls with every breath, the glint of a gold ring on his left nipple. The area is reddened, almost inflamed. Dimitri had pulled at it, hard, long, until Claude had gasped into the crook of his neck, relenting. He had been too rough.

Claude deserves better.

“Leave,” Dimitri repeats. His shoulders droop, exhaustion wearing at his form. He is—he is tired. Worn. Aged, so much, from war and death and fear and blood, from cutting lies and cutting truths and the stains of unnecessary deaths on his armor, in his body, ghosts gagging in his throat.

“Get out, please.”

Claude leaves, taking Dimitri’s fur with him.

-

Dimitri roars, stabbing through the chest of another man, shattering the armor effortlessly and plunging the steel bits into his heart. He kicks at the form, releasing Areadbhar and spinning to smash at two more, watching them stain their uniforms with the color of their lifeline.

Red.

Red and red and red and red.

It is so much easier to become a beast.

“Your highness!” Dedue. Dedue, and Annette, and Mercedes, by his right and under his arm, somewhere near Byleth. They stand tall, swinging effortless, easy, smoothly cutting through one, two, three more men. Effective. Efficient. Dimitri skewers one more.

Felix is a constant for his chaos, grappling at his armor only to be roughly shoved back as Dimitri charges forward again. A red man stumbles back, fear, despair, dawning in his eyes. No matter. Dimitri runs straight through him, throwing his spear to puncture through one more body, the splash of red and stench of iron reeking from their forms.

He’s laughing. Is he laughing? No, he can’t be, more of a growl than any words. Areadbhar returns to his hand with a wet sound, releasing two limp bodies onto the floor. An Empire yells—several, many, their heads removed, their stomachs split open, their legs somewhere on the floor. Those wearing red—those wearing red…

He will drench them in their color.

“Watch out!” Dimitri grunts, eyes flickering to Sylvain ducking under his arm, slashing at the incoming troops coming close. He’s red, his hair slick with sweat, his armor decorated with his colors. There’s red on him, soaked in him, the fabric of his clothes, trials of blood of people once living. Dimitri flings a hand out and smashes a skull in his fist.

“Your highness, what’s gotten into you?” Easy, gentle, as though Sylvain is not flickering between Dimitri and Ingrid—Ingrid, hovering close by, above. White, porcelain, clean. Dimitri is dirty.

“Only the strong succeed.” The roar comes easy. His calves tense, ankles arching before he’s leaping, off, teeth bared and eye alight with flames as he swings areadbhar clean into another squadron. They yell, sputter, scream, returning his attack with desperate jabs at his armor. Too slow. So slow. They miss, they hit, it doesn’t matter.

“Is that all?” A challenge. A hungry demand. He jumps from their fallen bodies to the next, pulling areadbhar free of limp forms. The Empire has called for reinforcements, and somehow they’ve arrived, keeping the Kingdom at bay, swords and spears and arrows striking in the air, the warmth of artificial magic swirling along the arms of the living still. Some try to revive the fallen, others scream, pulling their cloaks close, fire and darkness and death gnawing at their foes.

They are enough. They are too much. Dimitri screams, long, throaty, the sight of Ashe tumbling to his feet in the corner of his eye. Felix is yelling, rushing to Annette, her shoulders slumped as she pants, dress splattered with the remains of the men surrounding her. Dedue is close by. Dedue is fighting. Mercedes’ smile is a lie.

He can no longer see Byleth over the rows of red against his eye.

“Who’s next?” Dimitri spits as he loosens his grip on areadbhar, releasing it and tackling the sea of red blocking his path back. They are still here, they are still coming, even as Dimitri swings and bites and kicks and hits, fists breaking through steel helmets, nails cutting through human flesh. He shatters a person’s wrist, another’s neck, another’s skull. The feeling of broken bone is almost commonplace, every splatter of red just a fleck of water. Every death dwindles their numbers more, reduces the Empire’s territory more, brings him close to her. Every death is a necessary sacrifice in the face of war.

“Argh!” Someone grasps his hair and forces him down. Dimitri trashes against them, him, her, _it_ , just another blank face amongst the rest. They spear him, sword him, shoot at him, burning flames and swirling darkness biting at his flesh even through his armor, melting it against his flesh. He screams, wild, feral, blind to nothing but red, and even as they hurt him he swears to hurt them back. Again, and again, and his armor begins to crumple. There is an opening by his leg, immediately broken into by the sharp point of a spear. He yells, eye widening as red, _his_ red, begins to pool.

Every death is necessary.

His arms continue to grasp at the nearest faces, hooking onto bobbing throats and snapping their necks. Even so, Dimitri feels his arms falter. His legs slow, their kicking out made painful by the scattering of shallow cuts along his knees, the bleeding gap of a spear plunged deep into his thigh. A man slashes at his face with a knife, cutting his eyepatch loose, and even in the murky crimson he can see the wretched twist of the man’s face, the sight of his socket in view. Dimitri gasps, two hands squeezing hard at his throat. Weak, still, and he smashes in the head of the person. It is a distraction.

His eye rises, too little, too late. A man stands at his front, sword upward. It swings.

Dimitri squeezes his eyes shut, even with one socket being nothing but useless skin. A shame for the Kingdom to fall here, fall by their feral beast. Even so, he cannot say that he is particularly surprised. He had told Byleth once, years ago, that time had changed him. Without their guidance, he may have died long before, to men like these.

He is going to die here, to a man in red whose face he does not know, whose name he has never called before. He is going to die here, punctured by spears and arrows and burnt by magic, hair pulled back against the dirt, a sword to skewer his face. He is going to die here, dyed in crimson, knowing that every step he took will be retaken.

Every death is necessary. Even his.

“Gah!”

The loosening of the hands in his hair is his only warning before the body before him slumps over, sword falling from loosened hands. Dimitri grasps at the hilt, stabbing at the red holding the spear plunged into his thigh. He gasps as he loosens it, wriggles it out, surely cutting deeper into his tissue. But it is a weapon, a tool, and he tosses it forward to skewer two more.

The man who had pulled him down by his hair lies dead on the floor, an arrow through his throat.

Dimitri would believe it’s Ashe. He has no other archers on his team, no other who could watch him so closely, shooting precise arrows at the bloodied sea swarming his limbs still. His legs have slowed, the wound a constant pressure, red and red and red pounding against his head. He’s punching. He’s yelling. He’s screaming, pulling areadbhar from fallen foes, as arrows fly free into the faces of the men around him.

It is not until his surroundings are clear that Dimitri raises his eye.

Petunia. She’s beautiful, scales shiny as they catch the light, flying fast in the air. Arrow after arrow is loosened from her back, perfect hits through throats, between eyes, two piercing through ribs to puncture the lungs. She roars, hungry, a beast as much as Dimitri himself.

“Your highness!” Dedue’s call is a winded shout, and then Dimitri is being pulled back, cooling touches along his arm. Oh. Mercedes pants, tugging his arm close, familiar glow of her hands on his limbs, sealing shallow cuts. She swallows when Dimitri grunts, raising his leg. Even her magic will not properly seal the puncture, deep as it is in his thigh.

“Thank you.” Here, Dimitri can slow, his own heavy pants audible to his ear. The Empire’s reinforcements have finally been cut down, Byleth standing tall with their sword clutched in their hand, red crusted between the bone. They have paved a way in the red, Felix and Sylvain at their rear, Ashe holding his bow close, an arrow spinning in his hand. Ingrid and Annette are a pace behind. Her Pegasus is no longer white, now stained bloody red handprints along their side, trotting slowly with a deep gash in its wing.

They’re safe. He’s safe.

Dimitri grunts as gusts of wind smack at him, his hair flying back. Dedue shields him warily, blocking his eye from blades of grass and loose blood flung loose by the flapping wings. Petunia roars, descending onto the field, her eyes amber as they fixate on them. Mercedes’ drops her arm, pulling away her cool warmth from Dimitri’s leg, the waxy white scar of artificial health left behind.

Claude drops from Petunia, his bow clutched in his hand. His eyes are blank, easy smile on his face as he nods to Mercedes and Dedue.

“Hey! I think Byleth wants us to go up ahead.” He gestures to their back, coat floating gently as Felix pulls Annette to a stop by their behind, Ingrid and Sylvain clutching their sides as they lean against each other, Ashe waving at them. Dedue waves back, though his feet stay put. His eyes stay on Dimitri, jaw chewing on air.

“Go,” Dimitri assures. Mercedes hums, tugging at Dedue’s arm, and then they are gone, careful steps over trails of red and split insides, twitching fingers amongst fallen bodies. Petunia coos after them, curling her wings high to shade her master. He walks under her soft underbelly, green eyes hazy.

They refocus immediately when his hand slams against Dimitri’s throat.

“Hey.” Claude smiles as his other hand comes up to pinch at Dimitri’s hair, rubbing stray locks between his fingers. He hums, glancing over his shoulder to the rest of the team making their way to Byleth. Petunia’s wing comes downward, effectively shielding the sky from Dimitri’s gaze.

“Hey,” Claude repeats, and then they’re flush, feet to feet, Claude’s hands grasping Dimitri’s hair and pulling him downward. He stumbles, blankly aware of the dull ache of his legs, radiating outward from his thigh. Dimitri blinks, mouth clicking shut as Claude slides closer, closer still, gliding by Dimitri’s cheek to ghost a breath at his ear. “Dima.”

The fingers at his throat squeeze.

“Want me to kill you?” Oh.

_Oh_.

“Y-you’re upset.” He must be, that false smile playing on his lips, the hand running its knuckles against Dimitri’s scalp, the fingers loosening and pressing hard on his throat.

It’s instinctual, the hand grasping at Claude’s wrist, pulling him upward, angling his face. Dimitri could forget, has forgotten, that Claude is shorter than him, nearly a whole head. He bends, shoulders slouching, pulling Claude close, allowing himself to be gripped, hair drifting on Claude’s cheeks. It’s familiar.

This is so familiar.

“Is this alright?” Dimitri swallows, feeling Claude’s finger bob against his throat. The question lingers in the air, waiting, even as Claude hums, eyes careful as they trace Dimitri’s face. They’ve softened, the sly grin on Claude’s face melted away to soft pink agape, just looking. Just holding Dimitri close.

“Yeah,” Claude murmurs, “this is alright.”

Kissing Claude is an oddly familiar sensation. Dimitri can—remember. He can know, flickering between old touches, old noises, old words. Visions, memories, _truth_ that he had forgotten forced forward into his mind. The first night together, the second, the third, every day and every hour and every second, away yet together. Claude’s fingers tighten at his hair, his neck, close, so close, and then he’s away, pulling a soft noise from Dimitri as he attempts to follow.

He should leave. He should leave, stumble backward, trip over his own feet to loosen his fingers from Claude, wander until cold air dulls the aching warmth pounding in his head. Dimitri should go, should section off his own area, blue and blue and blue stained red, not a strand of gold in his sea. Byleth must be waiting for them.

Dimitri’s feet refuse to move. He cannot own the moon, the stars themselves.

“Will you go—come to bed with me, Dima?”

Dimitri can let them own him.

“Yes.”

-

The first three days Dimitri cannot recall if Claude had ever actually slept. Sure, they had laid together in bed, shoulders brushing under thin blankets, but Dimitri could not say for certain that the other had ever truly shut their eyes, let exhaustion sweep them under. He could not say that he had ever seen Claude relax against his side.

He could not say it still, a week later, a pressure against his throat.

Dimitri breaths, slow, shallow, suddenly conscious of the light casting across Claude’s cheeks, the hardening of youthful features in the moment of quiet. Years later, worn by war and grief, his sunny classmate—companion—fellow student, perhaps is the best term, is stricter now. Stronger now. Clever, all the same.

His eyes are amber, caught by the moon.

“Ghh… hah…” Funny, after years of wanting death, waiting for it, how it so easily falls into his lap. Claude rocks forward, thighs tight around Dimitri’s waist, the tensing of his muscles a reminder of the years apart. He was so small back at school. Then again, so was Dimitri.

Claude is not so small now, the curves and dips of his face harshened by the stars highlighting the shape of his jawline, his lips, pressed thin. His arms are drawn up, high, hands clasped together over, around, Dimitri’s throat. In this quiet, Dimitri can barely hear his breaths, shallow, soft, so perfectly in time with his own.

The pressure against his throat tightens. Perhaps some lifetime ago, Dimitri would thrash out, demanding, angry, yet now he can barely find the strength to move his limbs. Distantly, he recalls the times Claude had meandered into the gardens to emerge with various colorful concoctions and a mewling grin, dipping poisons and powders into other’s drinks. It would not be so unreasonable for Claude to devise something now.

Dimitri may fall tonight, not in battle, but peacefully in a fit of sleep.

“You’re smiling?” Honesty set bare. Claude’s fingers loosen, the palm of his hand pressed flat to Dimitri’s adam apple. It bobs under his touch, an audible swallow that does little to shake the spreading grin. He should resist. He should fight.

Ah, but it is so much easier to let himself be killed.

“You’re crazy,” Claude murmurs, ducking low. The loose strands of his hair dance upon Dimitri’s cheek, tickling, his eyes blank shadows searching. “I’m sleeping with a crazy person. What the hell.”

“Kill me then.” Dimitri wheezes, oxygen filling his lungs, warmth and cold spearheading conflict in his mind. His chest shudders with every coughing breath, and though he can throw his neck back he finds himself rearing forward instead, cutting himself off against Claude’s fingers. Claude flinches back, legs tightening their hold.

“You want to die that bad?” A whisper in the darkness.

“Yes.” Dimitri hacks, shivering, the lids of his eye remarkably heavy.

“Is that the truth?” He grins, truly, at that. What a ridiculous thought. As though war, this war, could be faced by any that fear death. By any who would be unable to embrace it truly, wrap themselves in red ribbon and dipped in the grasping black hands of once enemies. A silly question.

“Yes,” Claude grinds his palm harsh and for a moment Dimitri feels the room spin, light, hazy, “I-I swore. We made a deal.”

They did.

The pressure relieves, air swirling back into Dimitri. He cannot help the bouncing of his chest, clench of his hands, as his throat scratches and burns from oxygen forcing its way into his lungs. He cannot quell the curve of his arms upwards, clawing at his own skin, leaving red lines across scarred skin. Hands, fingers, grasp at his wrists, tugging them away with a grunt, leaving Dimitri to stare upwards into narrowed stars.

Eventually, the rise and fall of his chest slows, legs shivering from the discarding of the blanket that once laid over them, now somewhere behind Claude’s form, pressing Dimitri against the bed. He could attack Claude, perhaps, grasp his arms and force him back, crack his neck. He could kill him now, render him dead before a clever word can slip from his tongue, dancing around Dimitri’s head.

“Hey.” Quiet, a dip in the bed as Claude shuffles forward, balancing on Dimitri’s chest. He rises, knees pressed to either side of Dimitri’s head, and he notes that Claude could kill him like this, perhaps, just puncturing his head with a dagger. Silly to imagine, given the war he’s been up against. But it’s Claude.

It’s Claude.

“Hello,” he responds. It comes out a dry croak. It may be the light, perhaps, that darkens Claude’s gaze.

“Does teach know?” Dimitri bobs his head, lolling to the side.

“No.” Yes. He doesn’t know, not really, the extend of knowledge that professor carries on their back. Surely it is an infinite lifetime’s worth of knowing, leading, always ensuring the survival of Dimitri and his allies even against the strongest foes, those who could have been his strongest allies. In the darkness, in the light, professor was there.

Claude blocks the window now, the light nothing more than a glimmer outlining the shadows of his figure.

“Dedue?” No. Yes. Dimitri shrugs, tensing as sore muscles protest the movement. His friend is no fool; it would be no surprise to discover Dedue’s extent of knowledge on Dimitri’s mind. Yet, some hopeless desire spins his head, makes him wonder if Dedue is unaware. If his thoughts can be unknown.

If he can pass in peace, and leave Dedue behind a world of his own choosing.

“Hey.” Fingers scratching along his scalp. Dimitri refocuses on Claude, on shadows, on light. He nods.

“Will you kill me?” Request. Plead. In the quiet of the night, it is difficult to determine the difference. Dimitri steadies his gaze on the stars behind Claude, on the moon beaming in, its light cast across their forms, drawing long shadows tilt on the floor. Claude takes in a breath. He lets it out.

His left hand grasps at Dimitri’s hair.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” he breaths. It sounds like relief, fatigue, amusing. His lips quirk against his means, and then Claude is bending, bowing, hovering over him with glinting eyes.

“Okay. Let’s make a deal: I’ll kill the great beast of fargheous after the war. But promise me,” his fingers trace the form of Dimitri’s face, slow, careful, the lightest itch of his nails gliding over bumps and ridges, “promise me, Dima. You can’t die to anyone else.”

Red.

“You assume I will win against her.” Claude pauses, lips pursed a moment before dipping low, lower. Dimitri’s eye focuses on the curve of his jaw, the line of his nose, the shadow of his lip.

“Won’t you?” His words are warm against Dimitri’s lips.

It isn’t a kiss so much as a resting pressure, flat onto Dimitri. He stills, frozen, suddenly conscious of the cold air prickling at his skin, at the tense workings of his legs, free from imaginary binds. His hands shake, unsteady, rising to grasp at Claude’s wrists, his arms, his shoulders. Alive. Alive.

“Deal.” Dimitri breaths, and then they are kissing, truly, a press by both sides. Claude sighs against him, into him, warm puffs of air that dip into and swirl in Dimitri’s lungs, forcing forward the chilled ashes of choked thoughts.

He will die at Claude’s hands.

-

Enbarr is but days away. Today’s bloody battle is just the beginnings of the end, the remaining troops of the Empire expendable for her. Just pawns in her game, just tools in her hand, just means to an end. Life, given up, to achieve a better world.

A world they will not live to see come alive.

Dimitri finds it a shame. He can understand Claude now, better, the regret that coats his form in war on either side, for deaths on either side. The lingering touches, the angry pauses. The hesitation to draw his bow.

The fact that he did, the moment Dimitri had disappeared from his line of sight.

“Dima.” His eyes refocus, sharp, onto the golden form in the blue. Claude’s eyes trail upward underneath purposefully lidded eyes, wetting his lip. Dimitri breathes, feeling for a moment inexplicably small in that gaze.

“Claude.” He greets, throwing the stripped wooden sticks into the crackling fire. They’ve managed to stomach down another meal, even after resurfacing from a gory battle. Annette had taken a substantially smaller meal, unable to eat any remaining dried boar scraps. Felix had taken her share and given her his grains.

Now, with the sun set and the moon risen, the fire dancing against Claude’s eyes is the little light left in their makeshift camp.

“We should sleep soon. I think teach is making their rounds on us.” Claude’s voice ends in a chuckle, gesturing to the sweeping figure checking tents and coaxing sweet dreams onto their allies. Linhardt is already fast asleep, sharing a tent with Ashe. Caspar had refused to nap, swearing to take guard after realizing the extent of the battle he and Linhardt had been benched for. In all honesty, however, it was due to the limits of Claude’s schemes—their team was the maximum for a stealthy entrance and exit.

It is admittedly nice to acknowledge Caspar’s determination to protect them after the conflict, for all his shouting in the beginning. It would be nice to have a night’s worth of rest. But, well.

Dimitri can rest after the war.

“I agree,” he nods. There is a moment’s pause before he sighs, drawing forward his hand to grasp at Claude’s wrist. A soft noise escapes Claude, his fingers tightening, before Dimitri tugs. His eyes dart downward, up, piercing stars in the sky.

“Shall we go to bed?” The words are cotton in his mouth, flimsy and full of hot air. Yet, the relief in Claude’s shoulders is palpable, the grin cutting. He steps forward, watching Claude mirror his motions.

“Lead the way.”

-

In hindsight, Dimitri should have not been so surprised to see his deal fall through. Fevered, shivering behind blankets and scarves and his own cloak, the remainder of the Kingdom’s forces had been at their weakest when illness struck. For even their own leader to be knocked cold was a pathetic insult in and of itself. It had been the perfect time to strike.

Claude had not killed him. He had nursed him instead, sitting by Dimitri’s side, waxing soft poems and whispering tales of a land afar, stories Dimitri had never heard before spun from a silver tongue. Even as cold darkness resurfaced time and time again, his eyes had always open to the murky white of sky, the golden dazzle of Claude’s presence.

He was weak. Open. A burden onto himself.

It was perhaps why anger had taken him so thoroughly when they next slept.

“You should have killed me,” Dimitri had growled, a roar in a whisper echoing against Claude’s skin. Their camp mates were sleeping, sound, exhausted from the days of worry and want as fevers hit its peak, equally stressing for those ill and not. Sleep had been a welcome escape for Dimitri until red hands and chains had forced themselves tight onto his neck, and then he was awake, vicious, hungry.

Easy, so incredibly easy, to grapple with Claude and force him onto his back, wheezing under Dimitri’s hands.

“You had your chance,” he did, he does, so pliant and willing under Dimitri’s grasp, panting with every bob and shift of his throat crushed between strong fingers. “You should have taken it.”

“What,” lies, lies, the grin on Claude’s face, so perfectly in place, so saccharine sweet, “will you kill me now?”

“I should.” He can, he should, he would, raising Claude forward off the floor, holding him so precariously in his hands. He could smash Claude’s face against the dirt, shattering his nose, his skull, leaving behind nothing but a red stain of the Alliance leader. He could release Claude now, let him run, hunt him properly and skewer him through with Areadbhar. No tricks, no schemes, just the brutality of nature.

He could squeeze, tight, at Claude’s throat, and watch the dawning of panic in his stars.

“So,” Claude wheezes, his hands finally coming up to grasp at Dimitri’s wrist. He’s not pulling, or perhaps he is, simply too weak to do anything outside of circling Dimitri’s palms with his own. “Is that… it?”

“Would you rather die in combat?” Dimitri could still release him, hunt him down, bow and crave and gnaw at the bloodied form of broken golden chains. Claude pants, shaking his head with a shiver, wincing at the tightening of Dimitri’s fingers against his throat.

“If,” if, if, _if_ , “I die… at least,” smiling, that same false nicety, as though Dimitri cannot feel the tremble of his jaw, hear the shaking edge of his words, “it’s to you.”

Claude’s breath leaves him in a shallow cough, eyes fluttering. Dimitri is sure his mind is swimming, the sky as dizzying as the parting sea he’s seen himself night and night again, awake in the quiet. His body is limp, easy, quick to jostle and fall free as his head lolls back, baring the curve of his nape against Dimitri’s grip. He could squeeze, right now. He could shatter Claude’s collarbones, his neck, hold his fallen head. No blood. No guts. No red. It would be easy. It would be so incredibly easy.

Yet, his fingers release. Claude falls to the ground, sputtering, wracking coughs and hasty inhales jostling his chest as his shoulders curl in, instinctive, grasping at his collar.

Dimitri rolls back, off, grasping the blanket thrown to the side and tucking it upwards to Claude’s arms as the other’s choking slows to breathless wheezing, deep intakes of air that color his cheeks. His eyes flit opens again, tracing Dimitri’s face, vivid with life. Confusion, irritation, wonder.

A tiny spark of hope.

“You,” light, airy still, as though he had not just been forced down by Dimitri, “won’t kill me?” The toothy smile has returned onto his face, a jagged scar that twists in Dimitri’s gut. He should kill Claude, here, now, before anymore senseless nights continues. He should rectify his mistakes, his callings, the rise of his own ineptitudes.

Dimitri cannot kill Claude, cannot force his fingers to close that final gap, cannot bring about the force of the animalistic fury that so otherwise occupies his body. He cannot, the same as Claude cannot, glowing amber and gold in the night, a pressure resting flush to his form.

He can’t, now, not when he could have killed Claude those days ago cornered against the Empire. He cannot when Claude had turned to him, lazy, false, with the brightest sparkling of hope in his eyes. He cannot when Claude had smiled brighter than the moon and the stars and the sun, basking in their light, generating his own, a single strand of good and hope and _life_ in the senseless battleground Fodlan has taken to calling war, no more than deafening screams and spilling of blood.

“I can’t,” Dimitri admits, because it is true, because he has sworn to be true, because even if Claude had not asked him to he does not think he could muster so much a lie to a star. “I can’t, and I won’t. Not you.”

It is relief that combs his fingers through Claude’s hair, noting the thicker locks, the smooth texture under his thumb. Claude hums, turning to him, eyes, bright eyes, brighter than any gemstone glistening on any ring, locking onto his face.

“You trust me too much. Who’s to say I’m not plotting your death way in the future?” The words would perhaps be crueler if his voice were not still winded, sore. Perhaps if Claude’s eyes were not guiding lights, his lips slipping into something more genuine.

“Then I will die by your hands, and be happier for it.”

“That’s kind of cruel, don’t you think? How do you expect me to operate under all that pressure?” It’s laughter, it’s taunting, it’s a sharp of genuine in the daggers Claude takes to call words. Claude’s hands trail upward, drawing circles onto Dimitri’s wrist, pulling Dimitri downwards.

“I trust you.” He’s sworn to be true, and the words come as easy as air.

“I should not, perhaps, but I do. I trust you, with my people, with my battles, with,” he pauses, sliding Claude’s hands upward to properly grasp at his shoulders, drawing in a shuddering breath as his head comes down to properly rest against Claude’s nape, “my life. My future. Perhaps Fodlan itself.” Admiration for love, for life, for people of all shapes and sizes and colors, runs through Claude as easily as air. The pressures, the weight, of being king is not a curse Dimitri would wish upon anyone sane.

But here, clasped hand to throat and back, he cannot properly say that Claude’s mind is not as hazy as his own.

“You would make a good king.” Truth.

Claude stills under him, mouth agape, properly open, brows drawn up. His hands curl into Dimitri’s shoulders, gripping tense for a moment, before he’s breathing, slow, unsteady, a faltering to his jaw working on air.

“You’d make a king prisoner?” Awkward, hazy, stilted words as though they are forced unfamiliar on Claude’s tongue. His hand comes around properly to hook at Dimitri’s neck, pulling, pulling, until they are flush, head to head, eyes to eyes. Warm breath murmured onto his lips. “If I were—If I were a king, wouldn’t it be better for you to kill me?”

Better for Fodlan, perhaps. Better for the Kingdom, certainly, for the peace of minds of his allies, for the chance of ruling without fear of future conquests, future war. Better, maybe, in a world where Dimitri had lived a life without professor’s aid, without the memory of Rodrigue holding his arm. Better, perhaps, in a world where he had never met Claude five years ago, scalding him with his presence.

“No,” Dimitri breathes, his eyes falling shut by the glow of Claude’s eyes, his face, his very life burning in his veins. “No.”

He has lived too long in a world with starless skies. It is luck, it is fate, it is perhaps the kind interference of the goddess herself that brings Dimitri this one, brighter than all the rest, pulsing golden warmth into his flesh.

He cannot let this one go.

-

It is perhaps embarrassingly easy for Claude to wrangle him into the barebones of a tent, flimsy worn sheets thrown over their bearings. The proper tent fabrics were torn apart and resewn as hoods and covers for their crew after the flood of illnesses that took them earlier last month, and now with Enbarr dawning in the far corner of Dimitri’s eye, he cannot say that the promise of proper warmth and rest does not tempt him so.

He is satisfied here, two warm hands coming around his waist, a gentle release of air onto his nape.

“Do you want this?” Dimitri asks, because he has not before, not remembered to, lost in himself on a shrinking island in a sea of red. He asks because he has forgotten to, time, and time, and time again, even as Claude has given him a collar and chain and allowed him to tie a star to his knees. He asks because he wants to, and that is what Claude whispers to him when the night is fading and the stars dim under the rising sun.

He asks because he wants Claude to stay, here, and he wants Claude to want that too.

“What do you think?” Claude chuckles, easy, teasing, rocking onto his heels and pulling Dimitri along with him. Dimitri stumbles with his movements, following his rhythm. Submission. Surrender.

Claude could not move him, could not pull him down and burn him inside out, if Dimitri did not want him to.

“I wouldn’t know,” honest; “tell me. Do you want this?”

Claude pauses, buried against Dimitri’s back, and then his hands are looping around the fur on his shoulder, pulling it loose. Dimitri watches, turning a half step as Claude drags the pelt over his own shoulders, clasping it in the front. It is large, hilariously oversized even, drowning out his form with ease. Even still, he is an easy step back in, brushing at Dimitri’s undershirt, tipping his head up.

“What do you think?” Claude repeats, swallowing up Dimitri’s reply with the press of lips onto his mouth.

Dimitri sighs, relenting, needing, pressing back to Claude and sliding his hands downwards to cup at his waist, tug Claude upwards onto his toes so that he can better press his cheek to Claude’s. He plants gentle kisses at the curve of Claude’s jaw, his cheeks, his eyelids, every press bringing his shoulders closer downward, Claude further upward, until he’s certain that he’s pulled Claude nearly off the floor.

“Wait.” Dimitri meets leather for a moment, and he huffs. Claude quirks an eyebrow at him, amusement playing at his lips, though there is little denying the thrumming of his heart against Dimitri’s, the pretty flush of pink on his cheeks. Dimitri releases, letting Claude stumble a step back, biting at his lip.

“Let me undress.” Ah. Dimitri freezes, his fingers curling, unfurling, as the words settle. Dimitri’s fur falls to the floor, pooling at Claude’s legs, as he shrugs off his shirt, his gloves, the golden sash at his waist. Dimitri swallows, every tantalizing centimeter of skin revealed with the movements of Claude’s arms, the muscles in his arm and back pulling, retracting, then flexing again. His torso is marred with scars and marks, most from war, though the fresh, thin red ones Dimitri can recognize as his own work. He realizes, a moment too slow, that Claude’s grinning at him, light flickering in his eyes.

“Want to take this off of me?” This being the elastic band Claude snaps back onto his waist, pants shifting in the movement. Dimitri bobs his head, certain that his face is red, warm, breath uneven as Claude steps close again, placing Dimitri’s hands on his waist. This close, Dimitri fails to resist, grasping at Claude’s skin and pulling him back up, growling into his mouth.

It’s a relief to grasp at Claude, to bite at his lips and pull soft whines from that mouth. Dimitri pulls, tightens, holds, taking Claude stumbling forward off the floor into his arms, balancing straight to gnaw that his bottom lip. Claude moans into his mouth, allowing, his fingers grinding into Dimitri’s hair and tugging him downward, relishing control for just a moment as Dimitri works his jaw, tongue pressing into his mouth.

He learned this. He learned this from Claude, nights and nights and nights ago, in a memory he’s long since forgotten and remembered again. Claude had taken his face in his hands and whispered how to kiss, how to nibble at one’s lips and press tongue together, how to tease and taunt with no words at all. Dimitri groans as Claude pulls at his head again, angling him for better entry, and when Dimitri pulls away he can see the strings of spit between their mouths dragging downward to splatter at Claude’s chin.

It’s a dizzily familiar sight, images of spit and sweat and cum smeared on Claude’s skin, and Dimitri takes in a ragged breath before hooking Claude upwards yet again, panting into his mouth.

“Put your spell on me,” he wheezes, because he wants, he needs. The room spins unsteady, tension coiling in his gut, and his hands tremble as they hook back into Claude’s pants, tugging insistently. Claude is still under his touch, chest falling with shallow breaths, and Dimitri hisses when Claude pulls sharp at his hair, hazy green eyes shining through. “Please. I want it.”

Claude bends back into his arms, looking, searching, and this close Dimitri can see himself in Claude’s eyes. Red. Wanting. Needing. He feels like a beast.

He is one, will be one: all Claude has to do is ask.

“Come on, then, Dima,” Claude murmurs, and it works, _it works_ , the room glowing and fading and twisting into itself, a blanket of warmth flooding Dimitri’s body, holding him close. It’s Claude, Claude’s arms, his hands, his legs, sliding into Dimitri, and when his lips part to speak Dimitri trembles.

“Let’s go to bed.” It may be the ground that shakes, his legs suddenly both heavy and loose at once. Dimitri sighs against Claude, into Claude, parting his mouth to dig into swollen lips, biting down. Claude moans against him, pressing back, kissing at his chin, his cheeks, tracing the shape of his ears before pulling him low, downwards, letting Dimitri dig his teeth into the soft muscle along Claude’s shoulders.

“Come, Dima,” he murmurs, and even with his eyes focused on the growing red at Claude’s neck, his throat, eyes drinking in the nudity presented to him, Dimitri can hear the smile playing at Claude’s lips, “let’s go to bed. Actual bed.” He relents, dragging his teeth off and kissing at the sore spots he’s created, the red indents contrast to Claude’s skin. Some part of him wants to grab at Claude and hoist him up and bite at him hard, harder, tearing skin and sucking at the scars, but a greater part of him wishes to obey.

Dimitri allows himself to be led to the laid out furs, pushed against the fibers. Here, entangled with Claude, Dimitri moans, kissing at the bare skin and trembling from the skimming of Claude’s nails on him, tugging his shirt upward. Warm, wanting, wanted. Claude tugs his shirt upward, messing with his hair and chuckling, hot breaths hitting Dimitri’s cheeks. He looks, this close under their fabric, more vivid than any skies Dimitri can recall.

“I want to kiss you.” It is the spell that loosens his tongue, makes him press insistently at Claude’s skin. Dimitri can hear the laughter, feel the rumbling of Claude flush to his skin, pressing nips and bites to his scars, green eyes drinking him in. Dimitri is warm, warmer, and he is unable to quell his shivering as he hauls Claude a breath closer.

“Then kiss me.” Claude grins, the flash of his teeth unfairly arousing. Dimitri swallows, pressing upward, and then they’re kissing, truly, gentle presses that grow insistent as they swallow each other’s groans, biting into sore lips, licking at the wounds they cause. Dimitri chases every sigh, every pant, biting and gnawing and needing and _wanting_ , wanting to trace the shell of Claude’s ear, wanting to pull at his cheek, wanting to leave a trail of marks from his jaw to this collarbones, following the line of spit between their lips. Claude moans, a hand coming up to tug roughly at Dimitri’s hair, and though Dimitri is strong, so effortless powerful, he lets himself be stilled. Let’s himself be hauled upward, staring at the flush of pink descending from Claude’s head down.

“Why—why did we stop?” Uncertainty flicks at his insides, even as warmth flushes him fully, the press of Claude’s fingers to his shoulders and dragging downward. Claude smiles, beautiful, beautiful, and pushes Dimitri to the side, rolling away.

“We’re going to need some oil.” Ah. Dimitri bites down a whine from the sudden chill of air where Claude once was. He is back in a second, a semi-filled vial in hand, and the vivid recall of times spent embraced before makes Dimitri’s hair prickle. Claude must notice, for he shakes his head and laughs. “Don’t worry so much. We’re not going to go all the way.” His smile dims for a moment, pressing a kiss to Dimitri’s cheek, “Unless you want to?”

Dimitri returns the kiss. He hungers, he aches, distantly recalling blurred images of Claude on top of him, broken moans murmured against his skin, the temptation of pulling foggy memories into sudden clarity tempting. Yet, letting Claude nuzzle at his collar, panting while teeth dig into his flesh, watching his own blood spill, he finds that he cannot muster up the spirit to protest. The desire to say no.

Spellbound as he is, his wants line up remarkably well with Claude’s own.

“I trust you,” Dimitri remembers. Claude pauses, momentarily surprise pulling his eyes wide, before ducking his head against Dimitri’s nape, biting harshly. Dimitri groans, hands rubbing at Claude’s back, careful to not break skin. Claude hums, dragging his tongue along the fresh wound. This close, Dimitri can see the vivid red staining his cheeks.

They kiss, again, just once before Claude slides down, downward, his hands stroking long lines at Dimitri’s sides before hooking Dimitri’s own hand on the waistband of his trousers. Dimitri sputters, eyes flickering between his hand and Claude’s grin.

“Dima,” oh, goddess, how the world manages to quiver under those words, “come on. Take me to bed.”

Fresh warmth bubbles at Dimitri’s skin, his eyes wide as Claude tugs at his wrist, revealing his cock. He’s caught, taught, tied tight in his own desires, bound ever tighter in Claude’s words, his directions, the sensation of Claude against his fingers. Claude brings Dimitri’s hand to his cock, just running his fingers along his head, the vibration of his moan a greater turn on than any other sensation. His pants feel remarkably tight, straining at the weight of Claude pressed to his hips.

Then Claude is pulling away, uncapping the bottle, and Dimitri swallows.

“Claude,” he receives a hum to his words, the wet sound of oil splattering onto Claude’s ass, shiny, “Claude. Claude, please.”

“Please what?” Desire runs hot in Dimitri’s mind at the wicked grin crooked his way, Claude rubbing small circles of oil along his hips. His hands tremble, caught in nothing, caught in everything, the spell of words encircling his limbs and keeping him still.

“Please, let me touch you.” Inexplicably, the weight along his arms come free, Dimitri surging forward to pull Claude flush again, moaning as their cocks rub. His pants are tight, too tight, but he finds it impossible to focus on the ache when he can grab at Claude’s hair, his back, claw new lines along marked skin and lick at brown nipples. Claude jerks, loud pants pressed into the crown of Dimitri’s hair, his arms curling around to scratch at Dimitri’s arms, his shoulders, dipping down his back to leave sharp red lines.

“You can do whatever you want, Dima. All you have to do is ask.” Familiar, as familiar as the overspilling heat in Dimitri’s gut, as familiar as the moans buried into his skin, as familiar as the intent of Claude flush against him. Dimitri groans, low, hazy, recapturing Claude’s lips with ferocious need.

“Please,” he pants, tugging Claude closer, fingers tweaking at his chest, “I want,” he bites at Claude’s jaw, dragging his hands downward along Claude’s stomach, pressing at his abs, “you.” Dimitri heaves in a shaky breath, finally, finally, gripping at his own trousers and tugging the string loose, kicking them off. He’s achingly hard, wet with precum smeared to his stomach. “Can I have that?”

“Will you entrap me again?” It’s pleading, begging, restraints that once held tight to his jaw loosened from the hazy warmth of being here, under Claude, flush to Claude, eating up moans and whines and pants and having his own swallowed down by pink lips. Claude grinds as Dimitri groans, his head falling back at the sensation of their dicks rubbing, a hand coming around to stroke at their lengths.

“Yeah,” Claude pants, breathes, sighs into Dimitri’s mouth. “Yeah. Dima.” It’s hard to focus on him when Claude’s more radiant than the moon, sweat and spit making his cheeks slippery, the catch of his teeth on Dimitri’s skin. Dimitri finds his eyes flutter, overwhelmed as another groan is forced from his mouth, an equally shaky one spilling forth from Claude.

Dimitri whines when Claude pulls back, drool hitting his cheek. Careful fingers entrap his wrists, pulling his arms away from Claude’s back as he readjusts, and then Dimitri is groaning again at the sensation of Claude grinding his ass against his dick, soft pressure enveloping. Dimitri gasps, hands twisting in place, waiting. Wanting.

“Go ahead.” It’s a promise, a swear, a twinkle of desire and want and truthfulness from Claude, relaxing his grip around Dimitri. “Take me to bed.”

It should be unlawful for how powerful the words are. Dimitri’s head spins, forcing his hands forward to claw at Claude’s back, dragging him close against the fur. His hips thrust forward without abandon, heat and want and need suddenly alight under his skin, the gasps and shakes of Claude against his ear only spurring on his movements. Dimitri wants, and he wants, and he wants, and through all the blur he can see the crook of Claude’s lips, the glimmer of his eyes.

Dimitri groans, thrusting against the curve of Claude’s ass, gasping as hands surge upward to grasp at his throat, squeezing. His head spins, dizzy, as Claude recaptures his lips, swallowing down his pants and pressing hard, harder, cutting his breathes short. He’s been here. He’s known this.

“Claude.” His dick stutters, catching along Claude’s rim and pulling a hot groan against his teeth, clicking, his jaw shaking with shallow breaths. He’s burning up, the room spinning around them, unable to focus on anything but the wet sounds of his cock against Claude’s skin, wet by precum and oil, the bright sparkle in Claude’s eye caught by the shadows of his hair, brushing along Dimitri’s skin. “Claude. Claude.”

“Yeah?” Claude’s voice is a whisper, teeth catching Dimitri’s top lip, pulling, the snap of his skin swimming in his head. Dimitri’s asked for this. He knows, memories bubbling to the surface, of grasping Claude and growling and hissing and pleading. He knows, because the words resurface again and again, tendrils of desire that sink into his skin and demand to be fed. He knows, because Claude had smiled while spitting his own words back, silent anger prickling at his skin.

“ _Do you want me to kill you?”_ He had asked, and Dimitri had answered yes.

His legs shake as his fingers claw at Claude’s hips, his own thrusts increasing in speed. The bounce of Claude’s dick against his stomach smears precum onto old scars, sighs and whines panted into Dimitri. He grunts, baring his neck and squeezing his eyes tight as pleasure mounts, hips unsteady as unshed tears begin to build in his eyes, mind woozy. He wants this. He wants this.

“You killed someone for me.” Dimitri doesn’t mean to speak the words, yet they burst out in a series of coughs and gags as the pressure around his neck goes slack. He wheezes, curling upward, as the tears finally fall, every gasp forcing his hips to stutter. Cool oxygen fills his lungs, forcing them to expand with every wheeze; Dimitri finds himself curling, burying his face into Claude’s chest, choking pants petering off.

A hand presses against his head, still, before combing downward. It’s the steadying hold Dimitri needs, his gasping slowing to match his thrusts. When he manages to turn his face upward, it’s Claude’s green eyes that he locks in on. That he always focuses on.

He wants this.

“I did,” Claude admits, light, easy, pressing a kiss to Dimitri’s head. He shifts upward, letting Dimitri’s hands grasp at his hips, groaning at the wet feeling of his cock smearing the oil along his skin. “What—what about it?” His words break on a gasp, fingers curled tight as they tug at blonde locks. Beading sweat falls onto Dimitri’s face,

Claude looks.

Claude looks beautiful.

“I’m happy,” Dimitri breathes, pulling Claude close to kiss again. Gentle, wary, a brushing of their lips before angling his face close, the clacking of their teeth a note against the delicious noises of their hips together. His hand skims over the head of Claude’s dick earning him another gasp into his mouth, arms that cross over his neck, the tickling of Claude’s hair on his skin. “Thank you.”

“Yeah?” Hush. Quiet, even as boiling heat makes Dimitri clench tight at Claude’s back, even as his teeth are bared just a moment longer. Claude purrs, a low rumble of his chest, fingers coming up to angle Dimitri’s face close. Closer. He can drown in those sparkling eyes. “I bet you’re—hah,” his voice breaks on a moan, eyes fluttering when Dimitri flattens his palm along his shaft, thrusts speeding up once more, “I b-bet, you’re just happy to, to fuck me. Letting me,” his voice dips, quiet, more breath than words, and then Dimitri is gasping as Claude drags his tongue along his nape, teeth skimming the surface. “Take you to bed.”

Dimitri’s shout is swallowed by Claude, and then he’s cumming, pushed to the edge and beyond. His hips continue to thrust along Claude’s curve, spilling onto his back, along his leg, smearing the ground. Dimitri whines, high, reedy, as Claude fists his hands back into his hair, pulling his head back to bite at the reddened skin. The marks of his choking remain there, angry red, and Dimitri groans when Claude licks and kisses at his sensitive skin.

The lights seem to dawn and dim around Dimitri as the pleasure recedes, and he’s able to crack open his eyes again. His throat croaks open, blurry yellows and blues finding their place before he can refocus on the low panting still in the room, wet noises under his hand. Claude thrusts once more along his stomach, arms shaking as they palm his dick, rutting onto Dimitri in unsteady short bursts. He’s panting, whining low and greedy, and when his eyes lock onto Dimitri’s a crooked smirk takes his face.

“L-like, the view?” Dimitri nods, swallowing. He does, very much so, exhausted as his limbs are. Claude squeezes his eyes shut as a moan forces its way upwards, tipping his head back and arching with more flexibility than Dimitri could ever muster.

“Yes,” he answers. It must be unfair how quickly his heart beats when Claude’s eyes flutter back open, unfocused, overwhelmed with pleasure. “I do.” It’s instinct, desire, raw want that throws Dimitri’s arm out to grasp at Claude’s waist and toss him against the floor, a hand twisting at his cock as Dimitri rocks his thigh against him. Claude whines, loud, high, eyes blown wide as Dimitri pants, drool falling from his mouth to hit at Claude’s skin.

“Let me take you.” Dimitri swears, and Claude cums onto him like that, bowed in half and shaking violently as cum hits Dimitri’s stomach, mixing with his own release. His fingers claw crescent moons into Dimitri’s flesh as tremors wrack his form, before Claude surges upward those final centimeters to bite at Dimitri again, spit spilling onto his chin. Dimitri follows him downward, bending Claude impossibly further, licking and gnawing at his lips and groaning when Claude slides his tongue along Dimitri’s teeth.

Claude grows slack in his grip, muscles relenting as his legs slide off his sides, falling to the floor with a dull thump. Dimitri straightens, bowing back, as Claude’s panting comes to a slow, his eyes shut a moment longer before coming back up to Dimitri’s face. Something akin to a smile flicker on his face, eyes lidded a burning amber, before he huffs and rolls to his side, reaching out for fabric scraps.

“I think we stained your fur.” It’s true. Dimitri winces at the matted spots where sweat and cum and spit had merged, darkened sticky areas along the bottom half. Claude wipes at the areas, though Dimitri has little hope that it can be redeemed. He slides a hand along Claude’s back instead, earning him a stifled squeak, pulling Claude back down with him onto the blankets.

“Leave it,” Dimitri murmurs. This close, sticky and warm and satisfied, he’s unable to quell the thudding of his heart, the desire to kiss at sweet skin. Claude hums when Dimitri presses his lips at his cheek, then his nose, his eyes, his forehead, before giddy giggles burst forward. Dimitri raises an eyebrow, ducking away to stare at Claude’s grinning face a moment before his lips are recaptured, the curve of Claude’s smile delightful on his skin.

Minutes pass like that, old memories renewed by fresh sparks and gentle touches, fingers entangling as they roll on dirtied fur and mats, getting their already tangled hair even further so. Dimitri cannot remember how he’d ever woken up before and failed to realize the depth of dirt in his hair, the marks on his skin, least of all the lingering glee that swirls in his body with every kiss Claude returns. They’re lost in each other, tangled limbs, breathing synced, so much so that for a moment Dimitri thinks he could close his eyes and wake up as one.

He’s been here before, warm and soft and wanting. A whine slips from him when Claude pulls away, eyes lidding, mouth curved open. His words are heavy in the quiet.

“Do you want to forget?”

For a moment, for one aching millisecond of a moment, Dimitri finds himself shaken by the heavy déjà vu that overcomes him. He’s been here, the words at the tip of his tongue over and over again, heavy words that have sunk to the bottom of his jaw and never floated back up. Claude smiles at him, though it grows pinched every dawning second, the slow tensing of his hand. He’s hoping, Dimitri realizes.

Claude wanted this too.

“No,” he swears, true, sworn to be true, to himself and to his allies and to the beginning of truth coloring Claude’s eyes, his smile, the twitching of his lips against his cheeks. No, because the relief that shakes his body is stronger than his fear, _no_ because it is so much easier to let go of guilt upon the realization that he was never unwanted to begin with. No, because it makes Claude happy, and because Dimitri has begun to realize that his eyes have strayed to Claude, his smile, his eyes, the stars twinkling in his hair.

“No. I want to remember.” It feels like forgiveness, the hum of Claude pressing their lips together, a slow pressure that warms Dimitri better than any of their blankets, his furs, piled high at night. He lets Claude lead him through their tent, rolling away their placemats and retrieving a proper washcloth to wipe at their abdomens. His fur is forgotten on the ground, unable to be salvaged, and they lay back down on it when clean.

It is the first peaceful sleep Dimitri can recall in five years past.

-

Cold wracks Dimitri’s body still, the remnants of his fever gone, but there’s no denying the natural frigid temperatures of Fodlan. He can hardly imagine how Claude is taking it. Perhaps that’s why he so adamantly takes Dimitri’s furs, even as they share the room together, staring at the frozen air outside. Dimitri’s chest rises and falls as sleep climbs upward. His arm twitches as Claude sighs into the crook of his neck, pressed together under their blanket.

“It’s war,” Dimitri whispered. Truth.

“It’s war,” Claude agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t hope for a brighter future. Isn’t that why we’re here?” Empty promises, empty words. Yet. Staring into his eyes, tracing the curve of his body, Dimitri cannot find a stomach for cruelty. He nods, tongue heavy.

“That’s why you’re here,” he manages. Claude blinks, surprise, true emotion, shining through his eyes a moment before replaced by a waggling of his brows, a cheeky glint to his grin.

“Yeah? You mean you didn’t take me prisoner just to be pretty?”

“You’re not a prisoner. I cannot keep you. If this place,” his hands gesture to their bedding, the floor, himself, the skies arching above over their heads, “no longer interests you, then leave. Leave, before you too are killed by my side.”

Claude hums, laughs. Fake, real, a dizzying falseness that Dimitri’s never been able to puncture. He wonders, even now, how it would have been like to have shared a room together in the monastery, to sit in one class. Surely it would have been simpler then, when Claude’s taunting words would have been nothing more than passing remarks, light glances.

Now, his weight a comfort in Dimitri’s hands, his lap, he is more reluctant to let them pass.

“It’s a little too late to say that, don’t you think? I’m already here, after all.” Claude shifts, close, closer still, crooking his face to rest in Dimitri’s nape. “I’ve been chained to you this whole time; don’t you think?” He doesn’t. He had no intentions of chaining Claude down.

It’s a lie, even in his own mind, and he doesn’t dare allow the words to surface. Dimitri glances over to Claude, shifting him closer, sighing.

“If I win this war, kill me.” Familiar words, set alight again. He wonders, every now and then, about how comforting they are. How comforting they could be. How wonderful, really, it would be to have his torment cut short, his collar loosened.

He lives, now, for Rodrigue. For his allies who have died, who will die, who stand tall still by his side despite the red footprints he leaves behind, bleeding into the dirt.

Claude eyes him, simple, easy. “Sure,” he agrees. Dimitri can almost picture the dagger on his throat. “When we win, I will kill the beast of the Kingdom.” Quick, so swift Dimitri can hardly register, Claude pulls his collar downward, teeth scraping onto his skin. He grunts, hisses, eying his companion’s slide upwards, mouth crooked.

“For now, how about we go to bed?”

Dimitri forgets. Dimitri forgets, the nights, the days, the wandering moments between when Claude whispers loose words into his ears, sweet coaxing and praises that wax hazy wonder inside the beast’s head. Dimitri forgets, because he wants to, because Claude wants him to.

Because it’s easier to let Claude pull him forward, the sound of their teeth clinking in the night, staring into stars burnt into his eyes.

“Are you going to command me?” he murmurs, familiar, so familiar, a vapid feeling of déjà vu in the spreading warmth. Claude smiles into his kiss.

“Only,” he promises, “if you want.”

And that is it, isn’t it? Dimitri sighs, letting his limbs fall back, letting familiar dizziness conquer his mind. Edelgard’s head. Fodlan. The end of the war. Vengeance, properly, for those he had lost. Love, and care, and acknowledgement, for those he has.

What he wants. What Dimitri wants.

“Yes,” he murmurs, and for a moment he sees them then, five years past, Edelgard and Claude and Dimitri in the garden, speaking, laughing, for some moment children rather than weapons. Yes, he thinks, imagining silver crafted daggers and brown locks and embroidered fabric, wyverns and pegasi and horses, people riding them and speaking of them, the tinkling notes of a time long ago. Yes, he knows, biting into Claude’s lips and letting himself pant.

“Come on, Dima,” Claude whispers, warm, familiar, alive and present on Dimitri’s body, “don’t you trust me?” Teasing. Light.

Truth.

“With my life,” he swears. The world crumples in his arms. He will forget that night, and remember the next, and push Claude from his room and declare himself better off alone. He will stand tall in battle and get pushed down regardless, shoved again, and again, and it will be a lone golden arrow that cuts forward his path, his single star shining brighter than any spell, bolder than any splash of red. He will bound and be bound, kill and be killed, rebuilt again and again by wandering fingers and sweet words.

It’s the cruelty of life.

Here, in this moment, at least Dimitri can feel alive.

-

Dawn will not be kind to Enbarr. The Kingdom’s army has spent the morning preparing, eating their fill of dried meats and fruits and buttery sauces piled high on grains. Byleth is perhaps the best prepared of them all, holding their sword high as natural commands fall from their mouth, directing. Caspar refused to be let out, demanding to speak with Hubert before all is lost, though Linhardt had simply shook his head and said that there would be little point. There’s something he knows, hidden in the folds of his eyes. Secrets yet to be spilled.

Today, however, is not the day for chasing secrets. It’s the spilling of red, red, blood and fury and remnants of the beast inside that Dimitri plans to fulfill his afternoon. Sylvain and Ingrid had non-discreetly dragged Felix away from his tent this morning, though it was of little matter since Dedue had come by to speak about their plans. Ashe and Mercedes had cooked their meal together, and it is Annette now who cheers on the final soldiers with grim reality.

Claude jostles the strap by Dimitri’s side, a spare iron lance that he’s taken to using alongside Areadbhar. His own bow is slung casually along his side, and though he angles his back away from Dimitri’s sight, the sagging of his quiver is proof enough that he’s armed for combat. It will be the first that he will stand by Dimitri, near the front lines.

Fitting. It’s the first morning Dimitri had woken up refreshed, and remembered the reason why.

“You ready for today?” It’s meant to be cheeky, perhaps, but pressed so close together Dimitri cannot miss the hitch in Claude’s voice, the aversion of his eyes. Enbarr means Edelgard, the end of their war, and their deal with it. Enbarr will mean the end of them.

It was, once, meant to be Dimitri’s final resting place.

He doesn’t think Claude would allow him that. Funnily enough, Dimitri finds that the thought doesn’t bother him. Not anymore.

Not with Claude’s fingers entangled in his own, squished in their sides behind his armor.

“No,” he says, honest, always. “I will never be ready.”

Byleth shouts something, the sound of his army alive around him. Troops from every corner of the Kingdom had come to rally their king in one final fight, and Dimitri swallows, squeezing Claude’s fingers in his own. Every second ticking by is another reminder of what he’s come for. What he’s here to do.

“Hey.”

Dimitri turns in place. Claude slides in close, eyes wandering over the people armed in the camp. Dimitri can nearly see the cogs working in his head, the numbers and schemes sparking to life. There is so much there, inside his eyes.

Then they rise, locking onto Dimitri’s own, a smile curved on Claude’s face.

“We made a deal, remember? No unnecessary deaths.” Dimitri nods, the weight of Areadbhar heavy in his hands. Claude traces the length of his spear with a hand, brows pinched, before glancing back at Dimitri.

“I remember,” Dimitri replies. The yelling grows louder around them, no doubt rallying for red. They await their leader. Dimitri releases Claude’s hand, taking a step back, for a moment missing the weight of his fur on his back. Without it, he feels—smaller. Vulnerable.

Reflected in Claude’s eyes.

“Don’t die out there.”

It must be an accident, Dimitri thinks, a slip of the tongue. It certainly wouldn’t be a string of words Claude would have delivered to him on another day, facing another battle. There’s never been the assumption he wouldn’t make it out alive. Never, until he almost had not, an arrow freeing him from invisible chains.

Claude stands there still, a step back, then another, the rowdy chants of Dimitri’s army growing with every passing second. He’s receding, passing back, and even so, there’s a sad tinge to the smile on his face, the casual lid of his eyes. His arms swing by his side, easy, and letting himself slide away. Easy. Loose. The moment before he disappears, his eyes catch Dimitri’s once more, blinding bright.

The words thrum in Dimitri’s head, louder than any other.

He’s bound Claude, all those nights ago, with words and blood and the hard grasp of his hand on soft flesh. He’s been bound himself, perhaps years past, the first that he had realized how vivid green could be. Even as time has passed, even as his titles have changed, Dimitri stands tall, knowing the taste of dizzying words on his skin. Knowing that he wants them, knowing that he can have them.

A king. A beast. A lover, now.

“With this strength, let us protect them all. Today, we take Enbarr!”

Dimitri must live. There is someone waiting for him to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for the prompts: Hypnosis | Sthenolagnia (Strength or Muscles) | Hot-Dogging
> 
> If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading! Doubly so if you’ve already read this in the original kinktober collection (I see you and I appreciate you!!). I’ll admit heading into this fic, I was super worried about both tackling a new kink and pairing, but the reception from the community has just blown me away. If I wasn’t a dmcl stan before writing this, I would have definetly converted after lol. The temptation to title this "that one dmcl hypno fic" was real
> 
> If you did happen to read the original fic, you may have noticed it’s currently marked incomplete… not to fear! This isn’t a typo—as a little gift for an amazing twitter friend [ (she has dmcl plushes on preorder right now! ](https://www.etsy.com/listing/777070500/fe3h-dimitri-claude-plushie)) there will be a side story for this fic focusing more on Claude (and more nsfw hehe). After that? Who knows! There are certainly a few other dmcl fic ideas floating around in the air...


	2. Wisteria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Side story covering Claude's POV during the first half of Forget Me Not and some other worldbuilding slow burn things

> Wisteria (noun)
> 
> 1\. A climbing shrub of the pea family, with hanging clusters of pale bluish-lilac flowers. Native to North America and eastern Asia, ornamental varieties are widely grown on walls and pergolas.
> 
> 2\. Blessing for a long life. Wisteria are also used to express affections and serious devotion, whether to a cause or another person.

Dimitri lives.

It’s not such a strange concept, in hindsight. There had always been a certain set to Dimitri’s shoulders, some undercurrent of determination and barely contained strength coursing through his veins, born from blood and heritage and violence. The idea that Dimitri survives, four years after his supposed “death”, is not such a strange concept.

The oddity comes from the hollowness of his eye, the red stains on his hands, the slow twitch of his body when not in battle.

The oddity is the smile that graces his face when Dedue tries to rescue the charred remains of Annette’s cooking, the gentleness with which he breaks apart quarrels between Felix and Ingrid, the scolding he delivers to Sylvain time and time again.

“Claude.”

The softness murmur Claude’s ever heard, whispered into his ear under the moon.

The former Blue Lions has no curtains, no mattresses, no keys to hidden inns nor resting lodges. They have rickety camps and crumbling roofs, rusty pots and wet matches, blankets that do little to warm the body. They live in rooms hidden away to only bandits and passersbys for five years, and try as he might, Claude still can’t wipe away the memory of sneaking away six years ago, when the lights still turned on and the hands he kissed weren’t quite so heavy.

It’s easier to forget.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.”

Claude wishes he could.

-

Five years is a long time to be alone.

The Riegen manor is too large, too quiet, and even with the many servants running amok to launder and cook, to tend for the flora still living, Claude finds most of his time occupied in his story. He may well be locked up with a drawer full of clean parchment, the Riegen crest etched into the upper right corner of each page, a small collection of quills and ink, a single necklace the only remains of Claude’s grandparents, a single earring his only reminder of his parents. The conferences held between the Leichester Alliance is nothing more than petty squabbles that drag on far too long: arguing days turn to moons stuffed in Derdriu, yelling with nobles who don’t care what he says. Moons of work become years, and when he turns 22 alone, of marriageable age, it is almost enough to turn him to ale.

Hilda visits, when she can, and though she hides her concern under wide grins and flirty compliments, there is an ever present urge to her tone. Lorenz makes few appearances, though when he does it is almost always to scold Claude at the table, only to scurry him away after meetings to ask about his health.

“Have you eaten?” Hilda jokes.

“Have you slept?” Lorenz prods.

“Are you okay?” Questions Claude can’t answer for the sake of the Leichester Alliance. There are people, not the nobles in the room that yell at him about taxes and merchants and trade route fees, but people like Raphael and Ignatz, who struggle to make ends meet even on a good day, who see Claude less and less as the war drags on. People like Marianne and Lysithea, who rarely see the world outside their door to begin with, sheltered away as though it will hide the tormented screams of the innocent. People like Leonie, who sent Claude letters every moon at the beginning of the war, and who sends them still, even though he has failed to reply to any within the last two years.

People that Claude has never met, that he will never meet, murdered and burnt and tortured and ruined under his rule. People he could have saved, perhaps, if he weren’t sitting in a conference table for most of the day, listening to those who did not understand, who had no desire to even attempt to comprehend the effects of their actions beyond their manor, those who demean him for his age, for his experiences, for the skin with which they eye so venomously.

People who Claude may as well have shot himself.

“Look at what you’ve done.” Count Gloucester mocks, and Claude does, he knows, he sees the red leaking onto the floor, hears the cries of children cut in their sleep.

“We have put our faith in you. Still, my child cannot even leave her room from fear of this war.” Count Edmund says, and he’s wrong, he’s wrong, his own words and taunts and torments the chains that buckle Marianne to the floor of her room, yet still Claude cannot find it within himself to refute the words.

“We have more pressing concerns at the border. We need more troops!” Holst demands, though Claude has told him time and time again that they have no more troops to spare. That they are hovering on nearly nothing at all, surviving by the skin of their teeth. By the skin of Claude’s teeth.

“I think,” Count Ordelia murmurs, soft against the shouting, “that we should break for lunch.”

“Boy,” Judith, who visits him on horseback, who brushes his hair as though he is fifteen again, wide eyes lost at seeing Fodlan for the first time, “are you okay?”

He can’t answer.

It’s more telling than anything else he can do.

It’s Nader, Naderl, who sneaks in at the dead of night, carrying with him a bundle of woven silks and ornaments, engraved swords and poisoned arrowheads, a plush bear that Claude has not seen since stepping foot into Fodlan. It’s Nader who meets Judith with a surprised whistle, who forces Claude out of the office to spar, who tempts him out otherwise with the promise of properly spiced cuisine. It’s Nader who Claude bids goodbye to, Petunia at his side, Failnaught in his hands; Nader who cries the tears that Claude cannot bring himself to shed. They hug an hour before sunrise, and when Nader sniffles into Claude’s hair, hand running through messy locks, he wishes so strongly that he could share the motion. That he could cry, here, a moment of remorse before plunging his nation into war.

Tears for those who died in vain, five long years ago. Tears for those who died trying to make a difference, in bandit riots and suppressed unions. Tears for those who were innocent, who remain so, slaughtered before they could even consider the difference they could have made in this world.

Tears for himself, and the hollow shell of a dream once bright.

“You know I love you, kiddo.”

Claude knows. He’s always known, from the boisterous laughter Nader had when wrestling Claude to the floor, to the gentle ruffles of his hair when he learned something new. The ferocity of his hits when Claude had been poisoned, badly, when he turned seven. The suspiciously wet eyes when the attempts never stopped, gashes and slits and marks left by knives driven deep into Claude’s flesh that healed themselves, as though a miracle from the gods.

He’s loved. He knows that.

“Thanks.”

Claude’s eyes are dry.

Five years is an awfully long time to be alone.

\- 

The funny thing about war is that soldiers don’t care whether one is a noble or a commoner. Either they live, or they die. Survival, above all else, is the only thing that matters.

It makes Dimitri’s pitiful attempts at keeping himself alive all the more infuriating.

Claude finds it hard to believe even the densest person in the world would be blind to the reckless manner Dimitri takes on when enemies approach: the awkward hesitance of his thrusts from his youth gone, now replaced by a feral beast who tears flesh with his bare hands, fingers digging between the grooves of the muscles to draw blood. The Dimitri who leads the Kingdom’s forces is one who destroys friend and foe in the wrong moment. The Dimitri that stands with Areadbhar in his hands chases only one thing in his bare bones attempt at survival: death. The death of Edelgard, of her empire, of the people who have wronged him all those years ago, a child amidst burning people, tears and screams and the final murmurs from a man named Glenn.

The death of himself.

It makes him irrational. It makes him reckless. It makes him distrustful.

“You’re still awake?”

And yet, it was Dimitri who volunteered to sleep at Claude’s side.

“Maybe you just woke me up,” Claude whispers back. It’s hard to resist the roll of his eyes, harder still to admit that he wasn’t planning on sleeping. It used to be so easy to speak to Dimitri, something almost instinctual, when they were young and dumb and in love.

Dimitri can’t sleep now, next to Claude, the rapid thudding of his pulse and the almost excited tinge to his breath nauseating. It’s obvious what he wants. It’s even more obvious that he expects it from Claude.

It should be infuriating. 

“I’m not going to kill you. You’re not going to kill me.” The harsh words drop off when Dimitri tenses, a mild shift in the bed, and it’s with an exhale that Claude continues.

“Go to bed, Dimitri.”

It’s not supposed to work.

It’s a joke, albeit in bad taste, but a joke nonetheless simply because it’s better than a lie, better than digging into the painful reminder of times whispered between walls, cracks of doors, against a warm mouth and warmer hands.

How long has it been since they’ve spent time together, alone, away from the rampant undoing of the outside world, away from the titles and names and words that bind them to their supposed place in life? How long has it been since Dimitri had kissed him gently in the hallway light, the tickle of his hair against his cheekbones, a whispered farewell as though they won’t meet again tomorrow at twilight, seeking each other with such a desire rivaling a situation where they wouldn’t meet for years?

They haven’t met in years now. The fairytale stories of Dimitri whisking him away to a foreign land draped in frozen crystals and fine furs will never come true.

It’s not supposed to work.

It’s not going to work.

Claude isn’t sure how much he’s willing to risk to find out.

Dimitri grunts when he smacks his face, a loud noise of no impact. Dimitri’s eye grows wide, betrayed, funny, nostalgic in all the wrong ways and it’s easier to laugh, open mouthed, than to succumb to the bitter fester clawing at his insides. There’s a shadow of a smile on Dimitri’s face, and when he turns to push at Claude, playful, familiar, Claude could almost blink away the blood on his clothes, the smell of turned dirt covering ashes and organs.

It’s cold relief when Dimitri freezes, groaning while rubbing his sides.

“See that? Should have gone straight to Mercedes.”

A nip in the bud. He’s about to slip away, lest Dimitri continue to stare into the air as though Claude could somehow summon a demonic beast to stop him in his tracks, when Dimitri’s voice rings through the air once more.

“I’m glad you care.”

It’s not that simple. The words ricochet in Claude’s mouth, bitter, hasty. Dimitri doesn’t mean anything bad by it; he barely has a bad bone in his body. It’s not his fault they’re stuck together in the middle of an imploding country, watching innocent dreams be cut away. Not. Entirely his fault.

Claude didn’t have to come.

He knows that.

Dimitri succumbs to slumber a few minutes later, his breathing quiet peace in the night. His chest rises and falls in perfect rhythm, the flimsy sheet over them warmed by him alone. If there were any time to kill him, it would be now, a drought in his throat, pain stinging in his chest.

Claude watches him until the dawn rises.

If Dimitri chooses to wake up and stare at his back, his closed eyes and fake slumber, neither of them say a word.

-

The most wonderful part of the Abyss is surely its library above all else—uneven arches and a splintered balcony results in few frequenting far into the room, but only a minute of perusing the titles reveals an entire world of discovery. Texts from Fodlan, from Brigid, Duscur, Almyra, written in their original tongues and translated to a dozen more, sometimes in Fodlan’s own, sometimes in an archaic text Claude only recognizes from stealing Seteth’s diary on more than one occasion. There are old textbooks with faded words, pictures with faces drawn over time and time again. Under the proper light, it’s possible to look beyond the inked in doodles to see the makings of what seems to be a standing wyvern in human clothing, a sun behind them.

Abyss is home to those who don’t belong, human and creations alike. There are recipes for medication, plans spelling out disaster, a personal journal of a man who once held a crest after the Ten Elites. Dried flowers pressed into flimsy bookmarks have survived tens, hundreds, even a thousand years, hanging from a lavender ribbon. In one of the stranger aspects of the land, Claude finds himself enamored with inventions more than the texts describing them: telescopes, jeweled globes, maps depicting lands beyond the great waters. He eyes the enlarging glass, used to make text bigger, as well as what looks like the remains of a proper cannon. Never got around to using one, even when he had begged Nader to bring him on a boat ride to Dagda for his fourteenth. They had been interrupted by pirates, and Claude was immediately banned to the cellar until further notice.

It hardly matters now, surrounded by such rich splendor. The church would never allow any of these to escape their hands, and to be honest, there are letters of events that Claude isn’t sure even the royal scholars at home would allow him to touch. “Too fragile” for his rough hands, “too mature” for his childish tastes. Hah! He wishes they could see him now.

The only person he wants to share this with is already at his side, a stack of books tucked under his arm.

“It’s getting late, are you heading up soon?” Dimitri startles at his voice, straightening upright and blinking rapidly as though it will somehow wipe the sleep from his eyes. Claude grins, stealing Dimitri’s small tower and flipping through them. Crests. Duscur. The church. More Duscur. Three envelopes written in cursive to some Faerghus noble. Claude will steal those in the morning.

“I’m not sleepy,” Dimitri corrects, in what is an adorable attempt at stifling his yawn.

“Right,” Claude hums, picking up the text about crests and flipping to a random page before gesturing at it, “read this for me, then. Any line would work.” Dimitri shoots him a sour look before making a show of properly rolling his shoulders back, narrowing his eyes at the book in the weakening candle light.

“It says… um, crests are an important part of noble society,” Dimitri pauses, raising an eyebrow, though continuing with a sigh as Claude bobs the book in the air again, “okay. Uh. Crests came from the Ten Elites. Are we done here?”

“Yep. We were done the moment you didn’t realize the book’s upside down.” Claude can hardly be blamed for breaking into laughter at Dimitri’s frozen state of shock, made better when he joins in on the fitful of giggles. It must be the lack of sleep, the looming pressure of certification exams, something that pushes them to collapse onto each other in the rickety library chairs, knocking over books and letters older than themselves.

Maybe it’s the way Dimitri looks into his eyes, like Claude would deliver him the sun.

Maybe it’s the way Claude looks into his, wishing he could.

“I can’t believe you still fall for that,” Claude makes a show of shaking his head, mirthful, even as he manages to pull himself properly upright. There’s not enough room for two in the chair, and it’s easier to make room by placing himself on Dimitri’s lap, letting his legs dangle off the sides. This close, Dimitri can’t hide the way his eyes drop to Claude’s lips and back up, frantic.

“It’s unfair,” Dimitri pouts. Claude isn’t sure who leans in first. All that matters is that they’re kissing, thigh against thigh and hand against hair, his arms wound across Dimitri’s shoulders as he leans his entire weight in. Dimitri could carry him up the stairs and back, run a track around the monetary, and return him to his room with at night without breaking a sweat. Claude likes that about him.

He likes a lot of things about Dimitri.

“What are you thinking about?” Dimitri whispers against his lips, and oh, that’s the most unfair thing of all. Claude smiles against him, letting Dimitri slide his collar to the side, kissing his cheek, his jaw, the bump in his neck. It tickles, the slightest bit, and he lets out a soft chuckle when Dimitri’s hair brushes his collarbone.

“Something the church would never approve of.” The rush of heat to Dimitri’s face is a delight. It’s impossible not to kiss him again, humming into his mouth, playing with the folds of his cape. Claude’s not lying, exactly; he isn’t fully sure of the church’s official stance on gay relationships. They just happen to also be breaking a hundred other rules, starting with making out in a room of banned texts.

“Shall we continue this upstairs?” Not that Claude’s against doing anything with Dimitri anywhere. It just so happens that Yuri’s walked in on them twice now, Balthus thrice (how a man that loud manages to sneak up on Claude eludes him still), and if either of them manage to gain anymore blackmail on Claude he may as well give up and move out of Fodlan tomorrow. It helps that he isn’t exactly sure the tables down here can take his weight, and even if they could, they most definitely can’t handle Dimitri’s strength.

They had broken a headrest, once, and though Claude had managed to hide the splintered remains and swipe Seteth’s keys to the storage room, they don’t mention it. Felix had knocked on Dimitri’s door the next day, and though Claude had hidden himself quite effectively under the blanket, he still saw the shape of a human in the sheets with Dimitri. The strained four seconds of silence before the slow creak of Dimitri’s door clicking shut was perhaps one of the most cliché moments of Claude’s life. They don’t mention that either, mostly for Dimitri’s sake. Claude happens to adore the memory.

“Can’t we stay here a little longer?” Tempting. Dimitri’s voice itself is more than enough to draw a considering smile to Claude’s face, his fingers gentle as they run through blonde locks. If Dimitri truly wanted to damn them both with incredible library sex, the threat of Yuri or Balthus stumbling in or not, Claude could hardly find it in himself to say no.

But Dimitri’s avoiding his eyes, threading his fingers together, bobbing his left leg just the slightest. He’s nervous, weary, and when his fingers pinch the fat between his pinky and ring finger, Claude could make a decent guess why.

“I can’t sleep.” Dimitri confesses. His eyes track something unknown behind Claude’s head, trapped between ye old fairy tales, historical retellings supplemented with personal letters and journals, and a small section of notebooks written in a dialect Claude’s only even seen once, by a royal scientist who hailed from a small tribe in Dagda, before his family was chased out and he sailed to Almyra seeking sanction. Simply put, there’s nothing there but books.

There’s usually nothing there but books.

It doesn’t stop Dimitri from staring into shadows as though they can stare back, welling up against the room as the candle melts into a thin ring at the bottom of its cup. Claude’s no stranger to the midnight terrors that shake Dimitri from peaceful slumber, nor the wary gaze cast his way every time Dimitri forces open his eyes, gasping, as though he cannot determine if Claude is friend or foe.

Dimitri would never hurt him. Claude knows that.

It would be nice if Dimitri knew it too.

“Worried about the exams?” He’s curious. He’s so curious, a burning along his fingers that want to pry Dimitri open and indulge in the secrets he has to share, the words he will never say, the knowledge over spilling from his cup. What is it like, to see something no one else can see, to hear words no one else can hear? Where did it come from, the fire, the deaths, the way Felix spits out his name like a curse?

When will it end? Will it ever?

“Yes,” Dimitri says, he lies, with such unwavering ease even as his eyes crinkle, even as his chin quivers. Claude’s never met someone quite as open as Dimitri; his falsehoods almost say more than his truths. He wants to know. He always wants to know.

“Lucky,” Claude says instead, “that you’ve got Teach on your side. I think Manuela’s going to fail me for poisoning myself again.” It earns him a smile, tired, true, and the smile that quirks his own lips is so much more real for it.

Their kiss is slower, gentle, one and two and four and another, mimicking easy actions until Dimitri can focus his eyes on Claude, can meet his gaze with such vivid warmth that Claude knows that his own cheeks grow warm, something beyond joy bubbling against his ribcage. They’re not smiling until they are, tilting the chair back so Claude can properly rest his weight on Dimitri, breathing in each other’s air with the same need as flowers turning to the sun.

“Study with me?” Dimitri asks when they break, and though the allure of books is never ending, Claude has it on good authority Dimitri hasn’t slept well for weeks. Moons, perhaps years, the same haunting words crashing onto him in crescendos.

“Tomorrow,” Claude promises, pecking Dimitri’s lips once more. Dimitri sighs, faking anger though it fails so spectacularly when his hands come around Claude, hugging him with the same care as with handling a diamond.

“Could you,” he pauses here, the bob of his throat audible against Claude’s shoulder. They know what Dimitri wants. They know what he’ll ask.

But Claude would never say it without his permission. It wouldn’t be fair, to himself, to Dimitri, to the future they’ll craft together. In snow and under sun, on wyvern backs over mountain tops and in boats floating in the vast blue. One day, he’ll show Dimitri his world. One day, Dimitri will show him his.

It’s a promise, one Dimitri has sworn to keep. He makes a lot of promises, and he tries his hardest to fulfill all of them. Claude likes that about him.

“Could you put your spell on me?”

Claude loves that about him.

-

There’s no word in Fodlan to represent the dark magic Claude finds at his fingertips. At best, the loose translation from Almyran would be “fate speaker”, and even then, it can’t quite capture the depth of control that swirls in his limbs. It’s a bond, it’s trust, it’s something that commands any person under its grasp; it’s something that bends to the slightest desire otherwise.

The mind, the heart, the soul and the body. It’s trickery, it’s want, it’s delving further than any person should delve into another. It’s seeing one’s light, one’s dark, and wanting it all anyway.

Wanting to be wanted.

Claude could never fault Dimitri for anything.

Not even for wrapping around Claude like he’s a pillow, his arms tight around his chest, his legs entwined with Claude’s own, something hard poking at his thighs.

Somewhere, somehow, Claude knows he’s going to find this ironic. Maybe someday in the far off future, when he’s not pretending to be the lost tactician to a war that isn’t his, in a bed that belongs to someone who wants him to stay more than thirty percent of the time.

That’s not fair to Dimitri.

Claude can’t find it in himself to argue otherwise.

He’d rather focus on the pressing heat against his backside, the shallow warmth against his neck as Dimitri snores. It’s become increasingly familiar as of late, with or without his prompting; as inopportune as it may be, it’s flattering in some carnal way. That Dimitri wants him, awake or asleep.

Flattered as he may be, the position Dimitri’s chosen to lock himself in isn’t ideal for much of anything. Claude can manage at most a twenty-degree angle of his waist, his legs careful to unwind themselves around Dimitri’s. Claude can shift to his left arm, hedging his weight there for a moment as his right leg pitches forward, slipping out of the blanket against the dirt and digging in there to drag himself properly away from Dimitri’s grasp. Cold air immediately fills in on the warmth where Dimitri was.

Dimitri makes an attempt at holding onto Claude, his arms tight as they stretch around his shoulders once more. Properly oriented on his back now, Claude allows them to tug him back into the embrace he’s just squirmed out of. Dimitri whispers something that could be equal part snore or word against his head, lips pressed at the skin below his ear, forcing Claude to bite down on the sudden resurgence of habit.

He shouldn’t do this. It’s not fair to Dimitri.

He allows himself be grasped, sighing against Dimitri’s lips and pressing his own to them. They’re chapped, dry, made so by the bitter cold that nips at their ankles and depletes their supplies with such savagery. But they’re Dimitri’s, his lips, his hands, and it’s been a long, long time since Claude has laid with someone last.

It’s been Dimitri.

It’s always been Dimitri.

His hand snakes downward into the small clothes Dimitri wears to bed, out of some semblance of remembered modesty. At first Dimitri had hardly bothered, dressing himself in royal blues and heavy cloth out of misplaced sentiment for the man he used to be. Claude personally thought he looked rather dashing after shaving, though his arm had shaken so much after the first cut that he had to take over. Unfortunately, one of the many downfalls of war is that there is no room for fancy embroidery when the general should instead be properly clad in armor.

Dimitri hasn’t tried on the woven tunic since. Claude almost misses it, though he can’t deny that in this particular moment, small clothes are very preferable.

Dimitri’s large. It’s a fact that’s cemented itself into Claude’s head the first time they had undressed for the sauna, and his eyes could not help by track the form of Dimitri’s muscles, the curves drawn along his body. He could have passed as a wyvern lord even as a student, and Claude had failed to conceal his appreciation for it.

He’s appreciating it now, rubbing small circles against the front of Dimitri’s smallclothes. Dimitri’s arms tighten, instinctual, and his leg twitches as his knee draws upward, hitting the bend of Claude’s own. It’s easy to wax a finger beneath the bend of the waistband, crooking downward to drag the smallclothes lower, lower, and then up again, just caught above the midthigh.

Dimitri shifts, a dull grumble as his legs attempt and fail to spread against the elastic band. Claude pauses, careful, letting his hand hang back and waiting with bated breath. He hasn’t gone too far. It would be easy to stop, to tuck Dimitri back in, to turn and pretend that this is for someone besides himself.

Dimitri stills. A moment, then another, and it’s only when his breathing comes out in the same woozy rhythm as usual that Claude allows his shoulders to droop again, fingers trailing along the fabric once more.

It’s a careful game of pressure and retreat, short gentle strokes that earn him stilted moans and a shake of Dimitri’s hair. At one point Claude’s right hand joins his left, and only then can he cup Dimitri in full, pinching the skin and feeling the slide grow easier, slicker, as Dimitri begins to weep in his hands, his eye twitching as his groans gain in volume, in frequency. When he jerks out a gasp, his shoulders shaking as his hips begin to move on his own, Claude swallows.

He wants Dimitri now. He wants him rocking in him, against him, Dimitri’s chapped lips rough when they descend onto his neck. He wants to hear the gasps Dimitri never manages to hold in, the almost shy whimpers when Claude hooks his own small clothes against the bend of his finger, snapping them downward centimeter by centimeter. He wants to feel the vibrations of Dimitri murmuring nonsense against his ear, wants to feel Dimitri’s warmth pressed against him, around him, in him, wants to wake up to the smell of sex and laugh off the stickiness to his skin, open the windows and see Dimitri sleepily blink open his eyes against the sunlight.

“Claude.”

Dimitri’s awake.

“Dima.” Easy, simple, tracking the drowsy gaze Dimitri spares to his strokes under the blanket, the dawning light of understanding, the genuine want that surfaces in his eye. Dimitri’s arms shift from around Claude’s shoulders down to his chest, pulling him upward, pulling him closer. His breath is warm against Claude’s lips as he moans, louder, awake; when his eye focuses on Claude and Claude alone, they both still.

Claude leans in first.

Dimitri kisses him with the same lightness as a shower in spring, watching the sun peak through cracks in the brightening clouds and the perk of flower buds as they bloom, reaching upward to chase their light. Dimitri kisses him between gasps and moans, his hips jerking against Claude’s hand, his own fingers drawing lines downward. Dimitri kisses him like he’s familiar, a constant in his bed. In his life.

It’s not Claude who whispers against his teeth. It’s not Dimitri who swallows up his words, who groans out his appreciation, who’s rhythm grows erratic against Claude’s hand. One of them begins and one of them ends, under the blankets, under the moon, Claude can’t find it in himself to figure it out.

Dimitri answers for him, his voice catching as his back arches. He’s close, closer with every touch, every exchange of their spit and tilt of their faces, catching, wanting, swallowing each other whole. It’s purely physical: his eye squeezes shut as his teeth grind, for a moment raw and ferocious in every way a lion. Claude’s strokes hardly matter against the rough pounding of Dimitri’s hips, missing his fingers completely to rut against his stomach, his hips, the space between his thighs.

When Dimitri is about to cum, his eye flickering open just once, Claude is the one who kisses him. He releases over Claude’s hands, his thighs, almost definitely staining his small clothes and the ratty fabric they’ve laid out as a liner against the dirt. Claude holds him close until he stops shaking, until the teeth against his lips can relax once more, until Dimitri presses back against Claude and kisses the breath from his lungs.

Silence sans Dimitri’s heavy breathing slowing, the spaces between his shivers longer until he’s still. He trails his fingers up Claude’s sides until they retract completely, tucked away after shimmying up the smallclothes properly onto his body once more. Slowly, as though finally realizing that he cannot slip away from this scenario, his eye roams back up to meet Claude’s own gaze.

There are a million things Claude can say. Some niceties, some joke, some bitter callback to an event that doesn’t matter, never did. He has the hand he’s been dealt, and it’s better than some; it’s not great, far from perfect, but it’s playable.

Dimitri deals his first.

“How long are we going to play this game?”

He doesn’t know. The cards in his hand suddenly feel so heavy, lead, and they scald his fingers when they melt into nothing, spilling from his hands and splattering onto his feet, his ankles, jagged screws that tether him in place.

Dimitri kisses him. It’s softer than the last, nothing more than a brush of their lips, a reminder of his presence. It doesn’t have to mean anything, if he doesn’t want it to.

Doesn’t Claude want it to?

“Don’t you want to play?” He whispers instead. It’s rare, precious moments like this that he can indulge in Dimitri’s moment of startling clarity. Even on his best days, there are moments he trips over his feet when he thinks no one is watching, eyes tracking people that don’t exist, mouth working out syllables to things that don’t respond. Sometimes, when Claude manages to catch his eyes right before stumbling out of the path, Dimitri can return his gaze with a tired smile. Sometimes, that’s all he can manage.

Sometimes, it’s a little more. Dimitri shifts, his eye beginning to droop against his will. Claude can’t help the watery smile surfacing on his lips, leaning forward once more to kiss his prince. Then another. He’s tempted to go for a third before Dimitri’s yawning against his mouth, and allows himself to fall away.

How long are they going to play this game? However long Dimitri will allow him, allow this—wedging himself in corners he doesn’t belong, digging into secrets that aren’t his. They’re going to play as long as there are two hands at the table, three eyes to gaze into the other.

Claude started this game without ever intending to finish it.

Maybe he should.

“Go to bed, Dima.” Soft, gentle, enjoying the way Dimitri’s eyes flutter shut against the brush of his fingers.

He’s running away. He’s always running away.

At least he’s alive.

-

Dimitri is a mad man.

Claude understands Felix’s spits, in some base instinctual way. Felix calls Dimitri boar, beast, an entire library of animalistic names. Dedue is his dog, a monkey, a blind bat of a man who follows Dimitri with unearned loyalty, and it is cruel irony that Dedue is only so upset when Felix slams a sword against Dimitri’s arm and calls him a dark monster worth little more than the umbra beasts that ravage the Earth, Dimitri only so hurt when Felix spits ugly descriptions of Dedue for the man he follows, for the man he’s sworn his life to.

No one mentions that it’s Felix who stands at Dimitri’s other side, Felix who brandishes his sword with the same easy movements as a cat baring its teeth, Felix who snaps harsher and faster at Dimitri’s foes than even Dedue.

Claude gets it. Fear. Love. Anger, rooted in the destruction of war, in the terror of the looming unknown, despair at the present joy that seems to slip through their fingers so easily. Felix is angry because Dimitri.

Dimitri is a mad man.

He is not crazy, at least, not in the furious savage manner with which his enemies seem to categorize his actions. The haunting in Dimitri’s eyes is not borne from unnatural craze so much as the heaviest grief, and though Fodlan has no doctors who can hear out the words of the mind, Claude happens to know there are places who house such people. People who pause and listen and speak with such powerful certainty that life will move on, that life will be okay, and people will be okay.

Claude does not think of the man who held his hand after waking up with purple stains on his bed, a half stone lighter from the poisoned puke that he has expelled from his body while his crest had forced itself active over and over again, trapping him in an endless cycle. Claude does not think of his kind words nor his gentle smile, the way he had patted Claude’s head and told him that hatred need not define his life, that joy was an emotion just as powerful. That Claude only needed to want to be happy to find it in his life.

Claude does not think of him plunging a knife into his side when he is fifteen. Claude does not think of the king, the courtroom, the man bowing as the guards take his hands.

Claude does not think of the people he could have loved.

He thinks, instead, of the people he does love. He thinks of his parents, who he has hardly ever argued with because he has hardly ever spoken with them. He thinks of the bitter resentment he had once harbored towards his father, his half-siblings, the people he called family before he discovered that no, no, family is not made up of the people who swear and stab and concoct plans to eat him alive. But he loves them with a passion even as it licks and burns at his insides, a little acidic thing, and when his mother had seen him off before the men from Fodlan had taken him away, Claude had thought he was loved.

He thinks of Nader, who had loved him so much more clearly than anyone else in the palace, who had smiled with equal parts adoration and admiration, a pride so parental Claude could hardly ever address him as just his teacher. He thinks of Judith, his Fodlan equivalent to Nader, a teacher who was supposed to be just that and ended up worming into his life with such ferocity instead. He thinks of their needling, their affections, their pet names that he protests with as much fervor as his desire to accept it.

They are the professors, the guardians, the people who has led Claude into a life he hasn’t yet known. His parents who taught him independence, his country which taught him cleverness, Nader who taught him affection, Judith who taught him perspective. There is Seteth who scolded him from stealing from the library, and Tomas, even though the reality of his identity had burned Claude so, who had given Claude a path to the truth when no one else would. There is Rhea, who Claude had not understood, who he still does not, but who he must respect at least for her endless love of her children.

There is Byleth. Hilda. Lorenz and Lysithea. The Golden Deer, as a whole, Marianne and Ignatz, Raphael and Leonie. There is Cyril, who had not been in their class but had such a right to belong.

There are so many that Claude loves. Times where his heart feels so heavy and full from it, overwhelming, flooding, certain that no heart is capable of holding the sheer mass of want. He wants a good future, for himself, for his family, for his friends and for the strangers he will never meet. He wants them to be happy, healthy, free to want and to need and to receive love in return for theirs.

Claude loves, and loves, and loves.

He does not expect to be loved back.

Dimitri loved him. Dimitri had caught his eye in the cathedral and smiled with such curious warmth, not even a flicker of distrust in his face. Dimitri had laughed when Claude had shivered from the lake water, had draped his cape across his shoulders with the same easy grin and it had been real, real in the way Claude could not allow his own to be. Dimitri had faced him in combat as regal as a true prince, only to revert to normal, to the fretting, loving man that he was, the moment the battle was called.

Dimitri had trusted Claude even as his world crumpled. Dimitri loved him and Claude knew, he knows, he does.

The Dimitri that reached for his hand on that day, lingering over the harbor, over his people, asking for his support in war, had not smiled. The Dimitri that cuts down men as easily as one slices into butter, who emerges from battle stained red with the broken remains of weapons that have plunged life from so many, had not smiled.

The Dimitri who had requested to sleep by Claude’s side is the same who desires to have his life squeezed from his throat, the heavy beat of his heart slowed by heavy toxins, the spilling of the acids of his stomach from a puncture that leaves a gaping hole in his body.

That Dimitri, the Dimitri he sees now, yesterday and today and tomorrow, the Dimitri who craves life only for death, death only for life, smiles.

Dimitri wants Claude to kill him. He smiles as he asks. He laughs and he pleas and he cries with such open-hearted truth, such genuine base desires that should have been masked away long ago, the moment he was borne with the title of future king. He wants and he needs and he trusts, that horrible little word, so strongly and Claude cannot understand it.

Claude has not been trusted like this before.

He has not been loved like this before.

So when Dimitri asks him for death, for mercy, for the cutting of the cruel chains that bind him to the Earth, when he asks for something a lover should never ask for another, Claude nods. He fixes up the little rusted locks on his cages and gathers the dried cement in his hands as he adds another brick to the walls. He builds, and he builds, and he builds until there is a sprawling civilization built up in his heart, and then, only then, does he smile at Dimitri.

Only then, does he promise this death.

(And it’s funny, it’s so funny, because it’s not like Claude didn’t know. It’s not like Dimitri doesn’t radiate self-loathing with his words, not like his hands don’t clench and pull at air, have always done that, red and bloody and heavy with things that don’t exist. It’s hilarious, really, and he smiles so broad, teeth flashing from each corner of his lip, because it’s not like he hasn’t tried to prevent the inevitable. It’s not like he hasn’t written a law between them, a perfect little boundary, a line that should never be crossed.

Unnecessary deaths, he had asked, and Dimitri had sworn true by it.

He broke their promise first.)

So he kills Dimitri. The man he once knew, the one who had smiled at Claude across the dormitory halls and kissed him under the falling snow. The one who had promised to whisk Claude away into icy lands and atop crystal floors, where one could glide on ice rinks as though they were flying in the air, where one could fly, skating down long slopes. The one who Claude had loved, who loves, whose face he had not forgotten in five long years.

He kills Dimitri and smiles as he does it, trapping him between the cage bars and walls only he had penetrated. He buries him in iron and cement and blood and dirt, and tries to pretend that the streaks on his walls are a result of rain. There are sheets of iron atop iron, a dull heavy thing, and by the time Claude is finished there is nothing left to remember him by.

He promises to forget. It’s just one death, just one more, just a stranger of a man who never made it to the conflict.

It’s war, isn’t it?

Claude doesn’t have time for the pounding of his heart, the rush of something more in his ears, the way the moon catches on Dimitri’s hair, the warmth of the fingers pressing into his wrists. He needs to survive, to live, to race along the trees and finding a stable patch to lick at his wounds, recover, and rise again stronger than the rest. He needs to rebuild, to stabilize, to strengthen his walls so strongly that no man could worm their way in again.

He needs to go home.

Why does home look like Dimitri, smiling at him across the hall, the warmest embrace Claude’s ever had?

“Go to bed, Dimitri,” he murmurs, he wants, and when Dimitri’s lips flicker into something that could almost be mistaken for the same warm smile he used to reserve for Claude, he yearns.

He doesn’t sleep that night. He doesn’t sleep the next. But the lull of Dimitri’s evening breaths, the warmth of his chest, the tickle of his hair against Claude’s cheekbones—they’re the same.

The iron walls are breaking.

-

Claude wakes up with Dimitri’s face against his shoulder, Dimitri’s arms around his waist, Dimitri’s hips pressed into his own. He wakes up with Dimitri holding him like he’s fragile, a doll, the way he tip-toed around Claude when they were seventeen and blind to the cruelty of the world.

Claude wakes up to a smile pressed against his hair, the beginnings of his name in Dimitri’s mouth. To the warmth of another body, to the smell of breakfast, started by Dedue. To the sounds of birds starting overhead, and Felix stumbling out of Annette’s tent an hour too late.

Claude wakes up to Dimitri.

In another life, an imaginary scenario, this would be—fine. Okay. A world where Fodlan hasn’t been torn into three (four?) pieces, hasn’t cut up people and families into neat little squares, hasn’t set those squares on fire and trampled over their ashes. A world where Dimitri could dance with him at the gala, where they wouldn’t have to sneak behind doors and under flimsy tents, where Dimitri could run to his side out in the open. A world where Dimitri wants him, and it’s okay.

Dimitri does want him.

This isn’t fair.

-

For all their gusto heading into warfare, Claude isn’t sure he’s met anyone, much less a whole class of people, as awful at handling being ill than the Blue Lions.

Ashe was the first to fall to a coughing fit, nearly falling off his horse from the force of his coughs. Byleth had been the first to offer to tend to their archer, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, they too fell ill. Mercedes and Dedue had both taken it upon themselves to provide aid, insisting the group stop for the foreseeable future after they had stumbled upon a whitewater river not far from the main road, planting their tents and supplies firmly into the ground until even Felix had relented, offering to help Annette pitch her tent.

It had been not even a day in to staying in place that Dedue had fallen in. When Dimitri had gone to retrieve fresh water and failed to make it back, collapsed behind a shrub with a fever, they were well and truly stuck.

Dimitri had appeared dead when Ingrid had made her way back to camp, panting harshly before roughly dumping his body onto the dirt. He had been pale, whiter than a sheet despite the growing redness along his forehead, the hot coughs that wracked his body. Even after Claude had dragged him over to a corner in the camp, hiding within the shadows of the forest, he had continued to hack and spit, every breath spilling from him as quickly as he heaved in new air.

Despite his best efforts, the soup Claude’s brewed has only emptied itself onto the floor as Dimitri pukes into the bushes once more, a dizzying tilt to his body with every step. He had emptied out nearly half his stock of filtered water, more than two vials blessed by Mercedes, and had even resorted to fishing out old bottles holding aged “all-natural cures” that hopefully had become even more potent with time. Felix had been surprisingly helpful with providing ingredients and fresh water when prompted, and Mercedes’ detailed attention was invaluable for creating what should have been the perfect cure.

Dimitri still threw it all up, over and onto his clothes, his blanket, his fur.

Funnily enough, Claude can’t recall a single time he had tended to Dimitri during Garreg Mach. Oh, Dimitri had absolutely taken the role of mothering: Claude’s preference for potions and poisons was no small secret. If Dimitri were to be his partner, then why not make it clear what he was getting himself into? Claude had beamed at Dimitri two seconds before downing a purple thing that, today, he still doesn’t remember what it was supposed to do. All that matters was he fainted sometime between ten to twenty minutes later, and woke up at Manuela’s scolding and Dimitri in tears.

He had never tested himself in front of Dimitri again. Still, the flimsy wall between them meant nothing, and if he happened to miss more than a few classes hacking it would only take a matter of hours before Dimitri would show up to his door with half a serving of food from the kitchen, and the same stern lecture.

He had never stopped lecturing Claude, not even until the end, when it seemed like he had closed the doors and himself off to everyone else in the academy, even Teach. It was almost as if he…

Nah.

It’s better to focus on the present situation. The fever has taken its toll on everyone, ill or not, with inventory beginning to run low and neither faith magic nor Claude’s “almost-as-good-as-faith-magic” potions doing much use. Byleth is the first and only one to recover, bouncing back with almost startling energy, but even Ashe, despite being the first to contract the disease, is still bedridden, managing few words between the hollow coughs that ravage his throat.

Claude had sacrificed his blanket with little care, cutting it into shreds to act as rags. They’ve proven useful to soak in the cold water as a temporary compress. They’ve also been useful as actual rags to wipe up the blood that had begun to well up in Ashe’s mouth.

Dedue hasn’t gotten to that state. Neither has Dimitri.

Claude’s not exactly hopeful.

As though fate could dig them ever deeper into the hole they’ve found themselves stuck in, Sylvain’s right about the cusp of collapsing. Oh, sure, he says he’s “just hot because he’s surrounded by hot people” and “maybe this turns me on” but if Felix doesn’t drag him into a tent and force him to sleep, Claude’s going to slip a sleep draught into his drink and knock him out for the next three days. Better to have a restful slumber than hack up a lung and spend a week spewing out every meal. If they’re fast enough, the fever may just pass him right on over.

Should Mercedes catch it, Claude may as well end them all himself. At least it would be merciful.

“Please…” The speed with which Claude whips to Dimitri’s side is laughable; he can almost hear Nader in the back of his head, Judith knocking into his shoulder. Dimitri twitches, oblivious to the world, sweat pooling at the base of his neck as he hisses, arms shaking as they try to shove away his blanket. In an ordinary situation, Claude could grasp at his wrists and force them back down, raise up the cover once more without any fuss.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri sobs, and Claude’s hands still at his side.

There’s a special side effect Dimitri experiences that no one else has yet to stumble upon in this bug: hallucinations, and of the extreme kind. They’re familiar, achingly so, the wide blown pupils and quivering hands reaching out to something that’s just. Not. There.

Claude knows they’re better when he’s around. Times when Dimitri can’t still himself if not for his hand, a pressure against his waist reminding him that Claude’s here, that the lions are here, that teach is alive and fighting on Dimitri’s side. There are times where a hand isn’t enough, and Claude finds himself pulling flush to Dimitri, whispering words in a language Dimitri doesn’t know, won’t remember hearing. There are times when even that doesn’t work, and Claude focuses on Dimitri’s warmth, on Dimitri’s hands, his strength, his smile, because sometimes all Dimitri needs is to know that he’s alive.

There are times where the only thing Claude can do is watch from a distance, knowing that Dimitri would never hurt him. Not on purpose.

“El.” Ah. The name, the sheer implication, of the name usually results in Dimitri throwing a tantrum in his sleep, half-crazed run of motions that end in scars left behind by his own hands, fingers digging into his flesh and teeth against his arms. It’s scary, honestly, seeing the once mild-mannered man throw away all illusion to hiss and gnaw at a person who sits on a throne, far, far away.

Sometimes, however, there is no fighting. No screaming. No terrors in the night, whispering along cold skin, invisible forces a heavy weight on Dimitri’s chest. Sometimes, Claude turns to see nothing more than tears, heavy with as much sorrow as anger, the past and the future, and though he may kiss each one away they resurface faster than the flap of Petunia’s wings, soaring through the sky.

He may chase Dimitri through the darkness, but it clings ever so. It laps at their heels, along the trim of their cape, and though Claude has never drowned in the spirits of his people he feels them all the same, an endless plea for something that he cannot give hanging on his shoulders.

It is the weight of those sentenced to be king.

“Dima.” Light. Easy. They may be some ways away from the main camp, secluded themselves out of the safety of the others during this feverous time, but there is little to hide when the dawn peers overhead and engulfs their peace with tortured bellows. In another time, a gentler time, Dedue would be by Dimitri’s side, the other engulfed by Byleth, Felix, and further down the rest of the Blue Lions. Behind them, tucked away into the corner of the room, far from the golden halo crowning Dimitri, would be Claude.

There is no time for such schematics when death knocks on every door, and every night is simply another step closer to the last. No time for sentimentalities when half their party may well be one foot into the grave, heavier than any gravestone. They must live.

“El.” Dimitri croaks, again, then again, a literary of her name in a crashing stream. “El. El. El, El, ElElElElEl El El _El_.” His voice spirals into a sob, a dry wetness that clings to his words and stab into Claude’s. They are nearly out of water again, and though the stream is near the dawn of moon and stars overhead warn Claude from stepping out again, lest Dimitri awakes alone to familiar darkness.

The last time he had been carrying water with Felix, Dimitri had screamed for him. He had spilled his bucket on his rush back, and it wasn’t until he had captured Dimitri’s hands in his own, whispering forgotten words in a familiar language, that the hoarse shrieks had turned to sobs, to whimpers, to dried tears and slumber.

“Dima,” Claude coaxes, and when Dimitri’s eyes don’t open to his voice he is doomed to repeat it. “Dima,” a hand on Dimitri’s head, pressing against the cooled compress, causing caught water to leak from the sides. “Dima,” a shift of his legs, over, gentle, kneeling his weight onto Dimitri in a way that shouldn’t be so comforting. “Dima,” a sigh, a breath, hovering over quivering words.

He kisses Dimitri slow, gentle, a reminder that he is here, alive, and Dimitri is alive, that they are alive still under the stares of the stars, the gaze of the moon.

The world itself catches as Dimitri’s breath stills, quiet, and then there are hands on Claude’s waist, his legs, pulling, pushing, and though he is fast (faster, has to be, has to run, has to hide, can’t die here not yet not yet) the air in his lungs cough out as the ground comes rushing up to his back, a crackling groan as his shoulders knock together. The tears that hit his face are red, hot, burning, and though his eyes swim as they take in the glow of the sky, the trees, the shadows that cast from Dimitri’s face and the single eye bearing into his soul, it isn’t until Dimitri’s hands dig into his neck, harsh, that he gasps out half a word.

“Dimitri.”

Recognition. Willful ignorance. Determination to forgive, to forget. It flickers by like lightning in an impending storm, crackling warnings that die away to nothing when Dimitri looks, really, truly looks, and though Claude should make a dull joke at the wet compress that’s fallen onto his stomach, he finds that there is nothing funny about the burning in his chest, the glimpse of teeth Dimitri flashes that catch onto Claude with such terrible ease.

“Claude.”

It’s a heavy hand that tears at the tunic Claude’s taken to wearing, ripping loose two buttons from the front as Dimitri tugs it downwards. Cold rushes in immediately, the fresh chill of winter that’s damned their army so easily, and Claude shivers when Dimitri’s mouth, warm, searing, immediately licks stripes up his bare flesh.

Dimitri mouths at his skin as though he is prey, freshly caught, laid out like fragile glass for buyers to inspect. Dimitri presses his teeth into his skin and when his lips come back bloody Claude cannot suppress the soft moan that catches in his throat, the arching of his neck, tantalizing, beckoning. He expects Dimitri to bite, and he does.

It’s only then, the radiating heat from Dimitri against his cheek, that the moon comes crashing down.

“Dimitri,” Claude hisses, low, his hands coming up to grapple with Dimitri’s shoulders, to push him down properly. He’s burning, hot, too hot, and though Dimitri’s had ravenous fevers before this specific lunging is new. New, in times like this, is dangerous.

“Dimitri!” He’s not listening. Of course he’s not listening. Teeth dig into Claude’s neck, tongue along his jaw, fingers pulling at his smallclothes and pulling them down, further, further, as warm palms press themselves against the flat of his stomach. Claude grits his teeth, words caught between a moan and a protest, when Dimitri catches him at the base of his ear. Unfair, unfair, when his next breath comes out a gasp.

“Stop!” It echoes between them, a dull moment as Dimitri freezes, his fingers suddenly clammy where they lay against Claude, his weight once so excited now heavy on Claude’s legs. Dimitri’s hard, Claude dimly notes, and in another time, another place, that may be more than tempting. But he’s sick, feverous, and Claude hasn’t given up nearly an entire lifetime’s worth of dreams to lay with a dying man when there is a war to be won.

“Dimitri,” he sighs, his breathing labored as his skin prickles so, and oh, the scratches and bites on him burn so vividly, “Dimitri. Stop. You’re fevered.” Hallucinating. Crazy.

On the verge of death, in a way he cannot rescue Dimitri from. No arrows, no wyverns, no diplomatic words can bring Dimitri back from this. Only time they do not have.

“Claude.” Dimitri echoes back. Claude’s shoulders fall as cold relief settles in. Lucidity, ever rarer with this sickness, but lucidity all the same. Dimitri’s eye is clear when it settles back on Claude, taking in his face, his form, the tears of his clothing. His eye tracks along Claude, and in this moment it is so eerily blank Claude cannot help the swallow bobbing his throat.

It’s a mistake. The very next moment, Dimitri’s hand is on it, on him, and then Dimitri is breathing into his ear, licking his cheek, kissing his lips, and though he is fevered, though he is wanting death, Dimitri has never been weak.

It’s almost pathetically easy for him to be forced into the dirt. It’s worse when Dimitri grinds against Claude, hard, needing, and Claude knows he’s hard as well.

“Dima,” Claude gasps, heavy, aware, far too aware, of Dimitri’s hands against his throat, on his chest, dragging nails downward to draw circles on his hips. It’s not fair, it’s familiar, it’s desire and want and need that they’ve fed into years ago, and then days ago, greedy lust that he’s snuck treats to too many times. Dimitri mouths at his jaw, his top lip catching along the ridge of a raised scar left by Dimitri’s own spear, and that very memory leaves Claude breathless.

Fodlan’s cruel winter bends and frosts along bare skin between Dimitri’s hands, his mouth, the weight of his warmth against Claude, and it’s unfair, all of this, when he’s supposed to be Dimitri’s caretaker, his strategist, his.

Dimitri’s sick. This doesn’t mean anything.

“Give.” Dimitri’s word is hoarse, sore after days of coughing, puking, acid and mucus burning along the walls of his throat. Dimitri shouldn’t be talking, shouldn’t be kissing, and if anyone were to stumble upon them like this there would be no end to Mercedes’ fury.

“Give?” Claude echoes, his eyebrows drawing together. Dimitri glares at him, heated, searching, and though Claude is a man of many masks he allows himself to be seen through. Whatever Dimitri wants is not there, and he growls as his tongue leaves behind wet streaks along Claude’s shoulder.

“Give it. Give it to me.” Dimitri repeats, insistent, his fingers scrabbling back upwards to pull the tunic loose, looser, deaf to the protesting tears of the fibers.

“Give what?” He ought to stop him, or at the very least try to salvage the poor remains of this abused cloth. But he’s curious, and he’s wanting, and when Dimitri shivers against him their smallclothes do little to hide their arousal. Claude tries to cover his groan with his hand only to have it slapped away, a snarl at Dimitri’s lips.

“Your spell.” Dimitri groans, low, aroused, the vibrations of his words against Claude’s lips. It’s unfair, always has been, will be, and when his mouth parts Dimitri follows through with such raw animosity it is impossible for him to do anything but allow. It’s Dimitri’s spell, the ones he’s never noticed, words that pull Claude to and fro as though he’s a puppet on strings. And perhaps he is, running on the commands of another, kissing Dimitri back.

“Dimitri,” he whispers, he hesitates, and when Dimitri leans down to properly kiss him again Claude finds that there’s little reasons to pretend the restraints haven’t been shattered a long time ago. “Dimitri,” he repeats, helpless to the flutter in his body when Dimitri looks back up, something of a hungry smile along his lips.

“Claude,” Dimitri speaks, in clarity, in lucidity, in want, for Claude, for Claude, for Claude.

“Dima,” he relents, “let’s go to bed.”

It’s instantaneous, magic, the kinds of which Claude finds himself having faith in, the kinds that church does not know of, would never approve of, buried away in banned texts in their basement abyss. Dimitri’s arms waver, weak only in the face of his desires, his love, just another addition to the endless list of unfair advantages he has against Claude. His eye closes, shoulders dropping as his breathing turns shallow, light, and when his eye reopens Claude expects it to be murky. For Dimitri to have escaped, for his body to be left behind, for the spare lucidity to float out of his grasp once again.

Dimitri’s eye opens clear. He wants, something genuine, something true.

It doesn’t mean anything, if he doesn’t want it to.

The Dimitri Claude once knew had been meek, shy, and though he had desires it would be only after taunting, teasing, the careful touches and movements left behind by a knowing hand that would leave Dimitri capable of asking for more. He had been sweet, in a distinctly traditional way, and Claude had been honored to see the beloved prince in his bed.

The Dimitri Claude knows now kisses him with the ferocity of the waters, the winds, the moon’s heavy rotation crashing against what he once knew. The Dimitri he knows now is only a beast when his desires fester so under his skin, when wants spill from his mouth as vividly as from his movements, when there is no denying the heat of him against Claude’s mouth, his hands, his hips, his thighs.

The Dimitri he knows now plans to claim what’s his.

“Go ahead,” he coaxes, as though there is any need to with Dimitri rutting against his hip, Dimitri’s hands on his waist, Dimitri’s mouth sucking bruises along his skin.

It’s instinctual, raw, _hungry_ the way Dimitri tears into him, rough as he grasps Claude’s legs and hauls them upwards, rutting against him chasing a high so soon. Dimitri’s pants come out in crescendos, arching so lovingly before they crash over Claude, drowning him so helplessly under his hands until he’s nearly bowed over, unable to still the whines that slip through his teeth, high and needy.

It’s awfully easy to be bent in half, a hitch in his breath as he groans. As sexy as this is, his smallclothes feel remarkably tight, even more so when Dimitri’s hands come down to scratch at the backs of his hips, digging into the dip of his back that earns Dimitri a startled hiss, Claude unable to quiet his quiver at the sensation. Still, if they’d like to go any further than this, Dimitri’s going to need to learn to slow.

“Hey,” he murmurs, fingers coming up to play with the messy blonde locks. Dimitri glances over, his eye lazy despite the continue ministrations of his hands, leaving behind red lines as they mark Claude’s stomach, his teeth sucking in a bruise into his thighs. That’s going to leave a messy mark tomorrow, though Claude has no intention of anyone else seeing him nude.

That’s Dimitri’s special privilege, for now. He’s about to lose it if he doesn’t manage to slow down for just a moment.

“Hey!” He snaps, and though he’s aware Dimitri has strength beyond ordinary measure his hands are still careful as they tug sharply, leveling Dimitri with a mild glare. “Take off your clothes first.”

“I don’t want to.” Say as he will, Dimitri’s hands do slow down, smoothing the creases he’s left on Claude’s tunic. It’s all very sweet, coupled with the softer kisses he trails along Claude’s shoulders, his throat, the tip of his nose. For all his intricacies and trickeries, he can’t help softening just the tad at the earnest nip Dimitri leaves on his forehead, the smooth press of his fingers circling around his waist. It’s all very distracting; it would work, perhaps, on a man with lesser will.

“Too bad.” Dimitri pouts, evidently caught in his charming attempts. It makes it all the sweeter, and though there’s a calling to Claude to simply let him get on with it, he’s a man that’s nothing but stubborn in times of crisis. Arching a single brow, he leans forward to run his fingers in Dimitri’s hair once more, sighing against his lips. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I do.” The lack of hesitation shouldn’t be as damning as it is. Claude’s helpless to the beginnings of a genuine smile crossing his face, all the lovelier when Dimitri kisses him again, wanting, loving. Dimitri is as much a man as he is a beast; as far as Claude’s concerned, all angles of Dimitri are lovely in their own right. He’s seen the blood in the night, the smile in the day, and the faint flutter within him has never faltered to awaken to either.

“Take it off. And,” he pauses here, allowing himself a final moment under Dimitri’s watchful eyes. He’s hard, Dimitri’s hard, weeping against him even as his lips lay nothing but soft kisses along his cheeks, fingers exploring him anew as though they’re young again, unaware, unknowing. He pauses here to take it all in, to inscribe the moon against Dimitri, the moon as Dimitri, bright and shining and large, overwhelming, even as he bows to the Earth and swoops Claude into his arms. The river washes over him, reclaiming, and it’s with murky eyes that he speaks, “come on, then. Go to bed, Dima.”

Ravenous, angry, animal.

It’s Dimitri and it’s _not_ , it’s him and it _isn’t_ , it’s want and it’s need and it doesn’t work like this but it _does_.

Blues and blacks and reds streak across Dimitri, sinking into his form, his skin, his single eye that shines in the night like the beacon that calls Claude close. For a moment, a blinding startling moment, Dimitri pauses and shudders and sighs, milky, golden, a flickering light as his body flickers away, stripped, natural, and then it’s just him, him and Claude, sitting along in this dizzying world. Just him, and him, nude and wanting and needing for no reason at all. Because they can. Because they do.

Because the hammering in Claude’s heart is unfair, unfair, every time Dimitri submits himself so freely. Because there’s no one Dimitri trusts quite like this, and that’s the most unfair thing of all, if only for the way it shatters Claude’s reality so easily.

Because Claude is a king, a mutt, the future who spends his present drowning in his past. Because Dimitri sees, because Dimitri knows, because Dimitri wants him anyway.

It would be nice if Dimitri’s marks would scar.

Dimitri’s kiss is more a bite than an act of affection, a damning punishment for his guilt, his hunger, his never-ending search for something more. Curiosity stains his hands red, gluttony wipes them clean, and when he moans into Dimitri’s mouth the only thing unfurling within him is greed.

Sex without clothes is so much easier. Claude finds himself grateful as Dimitri leaves skinny marks down his arms, grasping at his wrists and hauling him up, upward, forcing him onto his knees and then completely off the ground, dangling by Dimitri’s hands, his mouth, his insistent need to bury himself into Claude. He’s whispering, gasping, every syllable more air than words and Claude kisses him ever fiercer for it.

“What,” he hisses, wanting, needing, and when Dimitri drops him with the ease of a man capable to breaking a neck with a pinky Claude can hardly be blamed for the gasp that escapes him, “is it?” The twist to Dimitri’s lips should not be so charming, the snarl to his words so effective, and as much as Claude enjoys laying down a mental maze Dimitri charges through in a single line, hands spreading his ass as his mouth circles his ears. His own arms are greedy, needy, groping at the muscles that shouldn’t have survived years of wild starvation, at the curves long Dimitri’s body, ghosting the growth of hair a line down Dimitri’s torso.

“I wanted you.” Hot, burning, against the winter air. Dimitri takes in a shallow breath, and Claude finds himself breathing in tandem. They’re matched, one-to-one, scar to scar and kiss to kiss. His stomach lands a dizzying flip as Dimitri’s hands move downward once more, gripping his knees and prying them up, open, spread around Dimitri’s thighs with such ease. Familiarity.

“I wanted this,” Dimitri clarifies, as though they’ve never done this before, as though they’ve done this every night. Damnation, judgement, relief, desire. He swallows down the greedy surge in his throat as Dimitri continues to speak. “I love this,” his mouth ghosts the scar against Claude’s jaw, the one Dimitri left behind on that battlefield that feels a distant century ago, “I love seeing you with my scar. My work.”

“I wanted to mark you up.” Confessional, enlightening, a wholly religious experience could be painted like this, wanting under the moonlight glare, needing under Dimitri’s eye. His dick throbs, hard, weeping, it’s only solace that Dimitri is just as needy, just as delirious with want. Claude swallows, knows Dimitri can feel his throat bob, knows Dimitri enjoys feeling his thighs twitch as he drags his finger downwards. “I like it. When everyone knows you’re mine.”

He’s waited long enough.

“Mark me,” it’s impatience, it’s stubborn, it’s a match left unlit in a wet box for five years exposed once more to the ache of fire burning in his veins. There’s a sneer to Dimitri’s words, a ghosting of the man who wields a weapon of the goddess, who not so much lays quiet justice so much as triumphant death to those who dare cross his path. Claude knows, he knows, that Dimitri could hurt him, could crush him, could shatter him in two the same as a child and a bug, and perhaps it is that thought that spurs him onward even as the moon stares its eye downward. “Mark me, then. Do it, Dima.”

“That’s a command.” Perhaps he is not so much an unlit match as wood chips in a bag, and as he’s set alight it flares within him, through him, burning his every touch until he can drown Dimitri in eternity. There’s a joke in his voice, a want in his words, lingering truth on his lips as he kisses Dimitri once more, tasting blood, his and Dimitri’s both. It’s unfair, it’s always been unfair, the world tilted itself when the sun had shone its tragic light on Dimitri’s locks, so it is only fair that Claude harnesses the little safety nets he has, the only chains that had fallen into his hands instead of around them, and pulls.

“Go to bed, Dima.”

The bite Dimitri mouths onto his skin pierces below his skin, his blood, the barest beginnings of his bones. It sinks and it sinks and it sinks until it curdles around his throat, dangerous, keening, and as Dimitri suckles the rich red spilling from his neck Claude can only vividly recall a distant memory warning young Almyran children of dangerous men in the night, who adorned themselves in oddities of shadows and smiled with teeth that sparkled like jewels, men who stole away young boys and seduced them before they would suck them dry. They would die at the hands of such a monster.

“Marked,” Dimitri wheezes, a delirious satisfied thing, and as he smiles at Claude, his own blood smeared along those white diamonds, Claude swallows. His legs itch and his insides throb, and he can hardly be blamed for hooking his thighs around Dimitri’s waist, pulling him close.

“Fuck me,” Claude coaxes, endlessly enamored with that burning heat along his skin, prickling, needling, every breath a tremor as Dimitri licks his lips and lines himself forward. He’s dimly aware that this would be better with oil, herbs, the proper methodologies and preparations he’s seen passed around flushing faces and sweaty palms, used himself alone where even the moon’s light could not peer into his deepest reaches. But there’s something animal, instinctual, that allows Dimitri to part his legs with such ease, allows Dimitri to suckle another bruise into his skin, the sinking of his teeth drawing blood.

“Fuck me,” Claude repeats, drones, moans, low and drowned out against the sensations of Dimitri clawing into his body. He’s so long, so big, always an intoxicating sight but even more so as he begins to sink his way in. It hurts, it burns, a distant crackling shout that straightens his spine as he shudders, taking in the growing weight within him. It’s wild, the base instincts of humanity, feeling Dimitri fuck him with only the looseness of a body fucked the night before, and the one before, where the dawn cannot slip its greedy fingers in, where the darkness allows them a veil to bury their sins.

Where Claude can feel Dimitri, every vein, every throb, the warmth of his breath against Claude’s cheeks, the hole he’s digging inside out within him, hands shaking as Dimitri steadies himself properly. Where Claude can breathe in the gasps Dimitri takes, the raking of his fingers alongside him, the drag of his dick inside him. Where Claude can open his eyes and see the moon.

There is no Duke Riegan, who allows himself to be paraded over the bodies of the fallen, over the round table of the dissenters. There is no prince of Almyra, no future king, unfit by his blood, his tongue, those glimmering emerald cut eyes, as cold as the gemstones laid into the gold cuffs of his sleeves. There is no schemer, nor trickster, that sharp tongued man who plays such wicked deeds with his hands open wide, the cards buried into his shirt, his pants, cut wide scars into his skin. There is only him, and Dimitri, and him again, one and the other under the night, animals in heat. He is shattering, he is breaking, he is bent and he will allow it because it’s Dimitri, it’s him, and there should be no good fellow allowed to indulge in such wartime pleasures except

“Claude.”

It’s nonsensical, it’s irrational, it’s wants and wonders and nighttime memories that spurn on Claude despite the boiling heat that floods him when Dimitri, his eye, that one beautiful moonstone, drinks him in. He’s being watched, he’s being marked, a mutt as much as a king and if it were perhaps anyone else he would have them beheaded for this. For allowing this, for perusing this, for bending him in half and fucking their way into him and leaving behind the stains of his hands, his lips, the warmth of Dimitri.

“Dima,” he says, because there is nothing else to say, there has never been anything else as free nor as heavy.

“Dima,” he echoes, because he can, because it’s real, this, the slap of their flesh and the chorus of their pleasure, the base values of humankind dangling in the backdrop of war. “Dima,” he shouts, because it’s Dimitri who bites into his shoulder, Dimitri who scratches words into his thighs, Dimitri who fucks into him with as much care as bred cattle. Dimitri, whose scars Claude hopes will never fade, these angry red burning things to mark his wrists, his thighs, the skin of his chin, so that all who happen to glance upon him may know who he belongs to.

“Dima,” he breathes, he moans, used and used and used, because Dimitri wants to, because he wants to, because he has been put into his place by a million other faces and a million other hands, and none of them he has wanted but Dimitri.

“Claude,” Dimitri says, lucid, awake, his eyes blown wide drinking him in. Drinking Claude in, the raw pinkness of his lips, the heady whines that slip, the blooming bruises and marks Dimitri’s buried within his skin. “Claude,” Dimitri says, aware, wanting, needing, a moment of clarity heavier than any chain bound, and for that Claude cannot help the shiver of his hands, the dig of his fingers into Dimitri’s skin. “Claude,” Dimitri says, more lovely than any sound in the world, more powerful than the strongest weapon left behind by the Goddess.

It’s unfair. It’s always unfair.

“Dima,” Claude gasps, eyes fluttering shut as the world itself begins to tinge into a hazy glow, gone but the light behind Dimitri’s head, his eye, his hands buried in Claude’s hair, the building pleasure of him within Claude.

“Claude,” Dimitri wheezes, and he’s close, he must be, because his eye dilates just the slightest, his fingers dig into the bruises he’s left behind, a belt of finger prints on his waist. Claude kisses him, soft, hard, groaning into his mouth because he’s close too, because wherever Dimitri is he is, whatever Dimitri wants, he wants.

“Bed, Dima,” Claude whispers, because it’s unfair, always unfair, and the least he can do is crook his finger and snap the chain the slightest bit tighter, his fingers sliding upward to Dimitri’s neck, pressing against his throat, hard, harsher, until Dimitri’s gasping, choking, his thighs twitching until he cums, shouting as warmth fills Claude, hot, burning.

“Claude, Claude, Claude,” it’s a mantra, it’s a whisper, it’s Claude’s name on his tongue and it would be that, the sight of Dimitri come undone, the knowledge that it is his hands and his words and him, just him, that is the cause of it, that tips him over the brink of pleasure.

Dimitri is still buried within him when the world stops its spinning, though it is no less dizzying when Claude pries open his eyes to see Dimitri’s open eye, searching, a lifetime’s worth of emotions pooled so clearly in its surface. Claude manages a dry laugh, though it rather quickly peters off into a shallow wheeze when Dimitri shares his smile, vibrant as the sky.

“Claude,” warm, a gentle breeze in Autumn, sweet as candy, “I’m going to move now.” Slow, gentle, remarkably softer than when he had entered, the thought flushing Dimitri pink with sudden shame. It’s cute, cuter still when his cheeks turn red as Claude fakes a loud moan, flopping back as his legs drop to the floor, admiring the warm that begins to seek from him as Dimitri pulls out. His eye darts to the trees on either side, wary.

This far from camp, Claude doubts anyone would have stumbled upon or bear witness to them. There’s no one in the shadows, none in the water, though as Dimitri swallows he wonders if he should doubt. If there is someone hidden there, a ghost with a nasty smile and nastier words, the ghosts who strip Dimitri of his humanity and bury him in their forgotten wants. If the moment of clarity has faded away, and in its remains only the lingering of a moment passed, the warmth less of companionship and more of fever.

But Dimitri smiles at him, that same smile he wore once five years ago, and perhaps the moment is still here.

“Come here, Dima. Sleep.” It’s easy enough to shove their wrinkled clothes on, in the unlikely chance that someone from camp will come this way. There’s cum on Claude’s thighs, his blanket, but he finds it doesn’t really matter when Dimitri flops to his side, his arms open, inviting. It’s only as his fingers close around his waist that Claude gasps, low, though it’s enough.

“I hurt you.” Dimitri whispers, pained.

“You didn’t.” He did. How could Claude explain, however, that it was wanted? That it’s wanted still, the bruises and the kisses, the fingerprints and the hugs, the whispers of death along with the whispers of a happier end? How could he wrap up those words without betraying himself, those walls he’s build so effectively, that cage he’s locked himself?

The holes Dimitri’s left behind. The path only he walks, only Claude follows, leading one to another even as the world spirals into red.

“No. I did. I-I couldn’t control myself.” Dimitri’s breath catches as his eye roams over the tattered edges of his tunic, the thing red lines blurring behind the blooming purples and blues along his skin. Absentmindedly, Claude can’t help but note how they look like small flowers painted on, left behind by his muse. Dimitri shakes his head, his breathing labored, as he speaks, “How can you trust me?”

Claude can’t help the laugh bursting forth, even as Dimitri recoils, his brows knit tight at the response. Something must prickle at his ends, frustration, confusion, and Claude shakes his head, helpless.

How could he not, when it is Dimitri who bows his head to Claude with such simple elegance, Dimitri who listens to his words as though they are heavy beats on a drum that does not play, Dimitri who brandishes his heart and mind and _fate_ on a silver platter? It is impossible to not trust, to not fall, when it is Dimitri who gazes at him with adoration, with admiration, with the stinging pleasant sensation of want.

How could he not, when it was Dimitri who stole his breath away all those years ago, when it is Dimitri still who kisses him soundly in the dead of night, when no one is awake to make judgements of their appearances, when no one is watching but the moon’s gaze, appraising? How could he not when Dimitri takes his hands into his own, when Dimitri cares for him so strongly, when Dimitri had raised his spear and lowered it still, asking for Claude’s companionship in this terrible state of war?

“How can you trust me?” He whispers in reply. It’s meant to be cheeky and comes out awfully fond.

“Claude—”

“Khalid.”

Gods.

“What?”

What, indeed. The foul spirit that tempted Claude’s tongue loose is gone now, and with it any remaining semblance of the easy confidence Claude imitates in the night. Dimitri’s eye stays on him, watching, a single sliver of the moon just for Claude, and though every beat of his traitorous heart lurches in his throat, Claude cannot bring himself to look away. He’s always been an awful liar to people who matter.

Dimitri matters.

“My name is Khalid,” Claude croaks out, little more than a hoarse whisper. It’s an excuse, an open door, something to let Dimitri slip out unscathed. Feign disinterest, sudden deafness, anything.

“Oh.” Dimitri murmurs. It’s gentle, the tinge of sleepiness dragging at the syllable.

There are things he can ask. There are things he should, as a war general, as a future king. Demands he should make, truths he should know, simple desires he should make clear. From his enemies, from his friends.

From his lover, if Claude could say the word without the thundering thud of his heart against the cage he’s so well constructed to protect it.

“That’s a beautiful name. Thank you for telling me,” there’s a pause, then, a gentle hum in Dimitri’s chest in a growing source of familiarity. Not a demand, nor a plea. An answer. A thank. “Will I remember tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.” Honest, brutally so, because he doesn’t. Because Claude, gods, Khalid, has never had someone offer their heart and mind and soul and life nearly to the extent Dimitri has. Because he’s spent the last five years of his life in a too large house with too many strangers, because he hasn’t had a person hold him the way Dimitri does, because he’s never met something who would trust the cursed half prince of Almyra.

Because he’s never met someone he would want to trust the way he does Dimitri.

“Do you want me to remember?”

He does.

The words come to Claude’s mind faster than any arrow he’s shot. He does, he does, of course he does. He wants this, curled into Dimitri’s warmth on a cold night, surrounded by harsh winds and broken trees and the barest remains of war, safe with a person who wants him to survive. He wants this, five years ago, ten, twenty, when he hadn’t known what want was, only that the crippling loneliness of the palace was a weight no child should ever shoulder. He wants this, has always wanted it, will always, traded secrets at twilight when no one was awake but them. Where Khalid was wanted by the only person who’s ever mattered.

It’s a losing battle. It’s always been a lost fight.

Dimitri waits for him, his overactive mind, the hardened set of his shoulder. Dimitri waits because he’s the best person Claude’s ever known.

For seeing the worse parts of Khalid, and loving him more for them.

Gods.

It’s easier to swallow, to blink away the rushing warmth under his skin, to focus on the itchy sensation of drying cum on his thighs rather than how comfortable and free he finds himself in Dimitri’s bed. To look at the sky and search for moons a galaxy away, instead of the brightest one dashing between crooked bars to chase away the shadows that linger over Khalid still.

It’s easier to attribute the dizzy rush of selfish desire to the possibility of a fever.

“We’ll see.” Claude settles on, and if the laugh he ends with is remarkably strained, it’s to no one’s notice but his own.

“Let’s go to bed, okay?” It’s strategic escape, and if it makes him cowardly, paints him pathetic, Claude finds it impossible to care. True to his predictions, Dimitri eye begins to droop, and though his mouth presses so gently against Claude’s cheek, what words he could have said are swallowed by weary sleep.

The lull of Dimitri’s snores, the slow beat of his heart, the warmth of his hands crossed on Claude’s body tug him closely to the edge of sleep. Before he can finally slow his mind, his heart, his desires, Khalid digs into the question. Digs into the hollowed shell of dreams once chased.

If Dimitri remembers. If Dimitri wants to remember.

That’s a problem for the Khalid of tomorrow.

-

“You really don’t remember?”

“No? Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Embarrassing? Nah. Well… maybe your snoring. Is that why Felix calls you boar?”

-

The fall of Fort Merceus is less exciting than the developments that come from it; namely, the stanch silence that descends between the unit as they return from battle. They’re dirty, by blood and by sweat, by unshed tears for those who have fallen, by burning ones for those who struggle to live. In particular Mercedes is a fragile thing, her sobs now silent though unending, dried tears on her cheek prompted anew by the drift of the wind, the tilt of a flower, the whisper of a man she had once held in her arms.

Byleth hadn’t seemed shocked at the identity of the Death Knight. No one truly had, a bland acknowledge of the truth until it had been forcibly spat into the air, the dying whispers of someone so familiar. It’s a grim reminder of the truth he’s known all this time.

The enemies they cut down are sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, exes and lovers. They are people with children, who are children, who were, their parents buried into the dirt by bandits if not by the empire’s own command, and if not them then the miscreants who run under the crest of the elites, the flag of the goddess. People who claim power no person should.

It’s the reality of war. It may be that very fact, the stains of Miklan and Lonato so deeply ingrained into the class, that leads to the Blue Lions understanding it so deeply.

Unlike the distinct line once drawn between the heirs of the noble houses and commoners in the Golden Deer, the Blue Lions trudge along in legs caked equally with blood and dirt, the dying cries of men ringing in their ears rendering them equal. They are as susceptible to death as they are to life; perhaps it is a good thing, in an awfully ironic way, to be reminded of that.

It’s only when one becomes blind to death that they become unsalvageable.

Then again, perhaps not. Dimitri stands tall now, his shoulders squared even with the stains on his furs, the remains of bloody handprints grasping desperately at an attempt to live. As Mercedes had mourned her brother, Annette laying by her side, the rest of the team had gone through the battlefield to recover their injured allies, to plunge their weapons into the surviving enemies. At the end of it all, his spear cracking the skull of someone in red, Dimitri had looked up.

The words ring in Claude’s head still.

“Was this necessary?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? Though Fodlan may have thrown themselves into this unholy war, there are nations who will not bat an eye to the death count, nations who will not even notice if this land were to implode entirely, wiping itself off the map. In a hundred years, perhaps even less time, new citizens will happen upon the land, the forests, the rivers. They will build, and rebuild, as fires and floods and people, always people, take themselves out. After them will be a new generation. After those, another.

It would be impossible to count the number of bloodlines that have stopped today yesterday, at some point within these past five years and the uncountable unspeakable horrors that crept before. It sounds awful, creeping, but Almyra would not care. Neither Sreng nor Dagda. Perhaps even Brigid and Duscur would celebrate, free, finding fragile tunnels to a peaceful future now that their greatest conqueror has murdered itself.

Or perhaps they would not, if the walls between them had foiled, if the people could love each other as much as they loved themselves. If the future they so search for could be achieved with words rather than with weapons.

Perhaps they would grieve just as strongly, the way Caspar lingers by Mercedes’ shoulders, as wanting to aid as any other lion.

Then again, that may just be Caspar’s infectious demand to be helpful in any which way. It’s charming in a way that things rarely tend to be in war and Claude finds himself smiling more than once at his antics, intentional or not. There had been a moment when he had tripped over himself running around trying to distract Mercedes, and when he had actually crashed into the ground, they were reasonably stunned silent at his frozen form. It was Linhardt who heaved a sigh, crouching downward and pinching the back of Caspar’s neck, earning them a piercing shriek.

Careful, a stifled thing, and then light, helpless laughter. Mercedes’ tears hadn’t stopped even as she giggled, half whispers of sadness and half desire to peer her eyes over the crashing waves, and as though given permission, the others had begun to break into equal joy, relief, for being alive and for being allowed to enjoy it. Claude hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks, bent over at his waist, mouth open as Caspar nearly tripped over himself a second time with his stark grin.

Then he had locked eyes with Dimitri, Dimitri’s smile, Dimitri’s unknowing gaze, and the laughter had died in his throat.

It’s not his fault. Claude knows that, instinctively, that this is—the result of something beyond their grasp. Fate itself, it seems, has drawn them into this spiraling whirlpool of demands and desires and unspoken fears born anew. There is no time for blooming grins on the battlefield, no room for loveless cries as the sword comes down, no moment for sentimentality until the edge of death, drowning in one’s own blood as the final flickers of what could have been flash by.

Fairytale endings, Claude knows, are reserved for those who haven’t stained themselves with regrets, who haven’t surveyed from a royal palace as the commoners impaled themselves fighting for a king who would never bat an eye for their lives. They belong to the people Claude has seen die, has let die, will let die under his rule, and for penance he can never offer anything more than the promise that he too has seen death, has soaked in it from the moment his eyes have woken to the world.

Away from the battlegrounds, clean of blood and dirt and vomit, Claude smiles at Dimitri and Dimitri smiles back. It’s all he can offer in the guise of a tactician support his general, and if it makes him selfish for indulging in it, indulging in this, then so be it.

There’s no room for a bleeding heart on the battlefield.

So he cleans his up, the overflow, the spillage. It’s red and it weeps and though no rags can wipe up the excess quite fast enough, Claude does so anyway. It flows from his mouth to his hands, through his fingers to his feet, damning every footstep when the night falls and the sun turns to the moon, shining ever brightly when it turns to greet Claude, the same gentle eye he’s fallen so thoroughly for.

“We truly must rest,” Dimitri says, commands, and like a loyal doll in his strings Claude allows himself to be moved into place. His smile shifts, dazzling, as Claude steps forward and its’ unfair, has always been unfair.

There’s never been anything fair about war. He’s always meant to run, to escape, scrabble for survival above all else. Rebuild, and rebuild, those crusty little walls and cages meant to protect that stupid, stupid child who had never cried away his naiveté, his endless desire for a world with open arms and glimmering smiles. But he bleeds, this damning red heart of his, the words in his mouth a weight that chains him by Dimitri’s side, always.

If he is to die, at least let it be here by his side.

“Sure,” he smiles, he laughs, easy, simple.

Five times is a long time to be alone. What’s another year?

“Let’s go to bed.”

He ought to write a letter to Hilda bemoaning the death of his love life. If he’s lucky, it’ll arrive before he’s truly cut down in war, and if he’s luckier, it’ll arrive before he has to mourn the death properly, hands cupping a still heart, the frozen glare of Dimitri’s smile ever genuine even in pursuit of death. Because of it.

In another world, perhaps, they could have stood on equal footing, men of one land rather than two, people who are as free to love as they are to breathe. But in this world, caught tight in the webs of war, if Dimitri wants to forget of nightly temptations and morning damnations, if Dimitri would rather forget the warmth of their hands and the mirth of their kisses, then that would be alright. If Dimitri would like to wake up free of the illusions of happier times, if he would like to smile at Claude without a single hint of the ocean pulling them into its waves, then that would be alright.

It’s not fair. But war has never been fair.

All he can hope is to wake up once more, to wake up to that familiar face and to sleep to its gentle gaze. All he can hope is for Dimitri to smile at him again, to ask for his words, to seek him out and play lovers, even if it’s just for one more night. All he can hope is to love, and to love, and to love.

Claude’s never expected to be loved back.

He’s always been a fantastic liar, when it didn’t really matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pure 16.5k of sweet, sweet Claude angst!
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to the lovely Raimy (@claudebert on twitter)! I've linked her store in chapter one, where she has preorders for these super cute dmcl plushies!
> 
> I could probably write an entire essay about narrative decisions and parallels considered while writing this part. I never expected to write from Claude's POV when originally working on Forget Me Not, so when I had to settle down and write it I realized that there was both so much more and less to talk about, things that Dimitri thought were true were wrong, moments where Claude would rather pretend he didn't know the truth. Even after writing, I find myself wondering how deep I should go into Claude's POV, because there are so many things he thinks that he wouldn't want to be written down. It all makes him very interesting, and very different from Dimitri, who is both a lot more honest and also a lot less depending on the situation.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this long wild ride!
> 
> Once again, this was my first foray into the dmcl community, and everyone I've met there has been super kind and supportive! There are many amazing artists and writers in the community that I strongly suggest checking out. I can't believe my first fic for this ship would be 40k omg, but I plan for it to not be my last! I hope to write at least one more chaptered fic for dmcl ^v^ (and maybe more fe3h ships haha)
> 
> If you enjoyed reading my fics, want to yell about found families, or support me, please check out my twitter [ @Shidreamin ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/)! I’m more active on there, and you’ll be able to see my zine previews before I post them here, as well as some WIP in the future! I've also recently set up a curious cat and ko-fi, if you'd prefer messaging me anonymously. ^v^


End file.
